The Circulation of Poetry in Manuscript in Early Modern England 9780367715403, 9781032006222, 9781003152491

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The Circulation of Poetry in Manuscript in Early Modern England

This study examines the transmission and compilation of poetic texts through manuscripts from the late-Elizabethan era through the midseventeenth century, paying attention to the distinctive material, social, and literary features of these documents. The study has two main focuses: the first, the particular social environments in which texts were compiled and, second, the presence within this system of a large body of (usually anonymous) rare or unique poems. Manuscripts from aristocratic, academic, and urban professional environments are examined in separate chapters that highlight particular collections. Two chapters consider the social networking within the university and London that facilitated the transmission within these environments and between them. Although the topic is addressed throughout the study, the place of rare or unique poems in manuscript collections is at the center of the final three chapters. The book as a whole argues that scholars need to pay more attention to the social life of texts in the period and to little-known or unknown rare or unique poems that represent a field of writing broader than that defined in a literary history based mainly on the products of print culture. Arthur F. Marotti is Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at Wayne State University and currently Director of its Emeritus Academy. He is the author of John Donne, Coterie Poet (1986; rpt. 2008), Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric (1995), Religious Ideology and Cultural Fantasy: Catholic and Anti-Catholic Discourses in Early Modern England (2005), and (with Steven W. May) Ink, Stink Bait, Revenge, and Queen Elizabeth: A Yorkshire Yeoman’s Household Book (2014). He has edited or coedited eleven collections of essays and written numerous articles and book chapters on early modern English poetry and drama and on early modern English Catholicism. He is currently working with Steven W. May, Joshua Eckhardt and Jessica Edmonds on an edition of rare or unique poems found in early modern English manuscripts.

Material Readings in Early Modern Culture Series editor: James Daybell Plymouth University, UK

Adam Smyth Balliol College, University of Oxford, UK

The series provides a forum for studies that consider the material forms of texts as part of an investigation into the culture of early modern England. The editors invite proposals of a multi- or interdisciplinary nature, and particularly welcome proposals that combine archival research with an attention to theoretical models that might illuminate the reading, writing, and making of texts, as well as projects that take innovative approaches to the study of material texts, both in terms of the kinds of primary materials under investigation, and in terms of methodologies. What are the questions that have yet to be asked about writing in its various possible embodied forms? Are there varieties of materiality that are critically neglected? How does form mediate and negotiate content? In what ways do the physical features of texts inform how they are read, interpreted, and situated? Impressive Shakespeare Identity, Authority, and the Imprint in Shakespearean Drama Harry Newman Instructional Writing in English, 1350–1650 Materiality and Meaning Carrie Griffin Reading Mathematics in Early Modern Europe Studies in the Production, Collection, and Use of Mathematical Books Edited by Philip Beeley, Yelda Nasifoglu, and Benjamin Wardhaugh Elizabethan Diplomacy and Epistolary Culture Elizabeth R. Williamson The Circulation of Poetry in Manuscript in Early Modern England Arthur F. Marotti For more information on this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ literature/series/ASHSER2222

The Circulation of Poetry in Manuscript in Early Modern England

Arthur F. Marotti

First published 2021 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Arthur F. Marotti to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-71540-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-00622-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-15249-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by MPS Limited, Dehradun

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Chapter 1 is a revised and expanded version of an earlier essay, “Manuscript Circulation of Poetry,” in A New Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture, 2 vols., ed. Michael Hattaway (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010), 1: 190–220. Used by permission of the publisher, Wiley-Blackwell. Chapter 2 is a revised and expanded version of an earlier essay, “The Cultural and Textual Importance of Folger MS V.a.89,” English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700 11 (2002): 70–92. Used by permission of British Library Publishing. Chapter 3 is a revised and expanded version of an earlier essay, “Chaloner Chute’s Poetical Anthology (British Library, Additional MS 33998) as a Cosmopolitan Collection,” English Manuscript Studies 16 (2011): 112–40. Used by permission of British Library Publishing. Chapter 4 is a revised and expanded version of an earlier essay, “Neighborhood, Social Networks, and the Making of a Family’s Manuscript Poetry Collection: The Case of British Library MS Additional 25707,” in James Daybell and Peter Hinds (eds.), Material Readings of Early Modern Culture, 1580–1700 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 185–207. Used by permission of the publisher, Springer-Verlag. Chapter 5 is a revised and expanded version of an earlier article, “Christ Church, Oxford and Beyond: Folger MS V.a.345 and its Manuscript and Print Sources,” which appeared in Studies in Philology 113, no. 4. Copyright © 2016 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. www.uncpress.org Chapter 6 is a revised and expanded version of an earlier essay, “‘Rolling Archetypes’: Christ Church, Oxford Poetry Collections, and the Proliferation of Manuscript Verse Anthologies in Caroline England,” English Literary

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Renaissance 44.3 (Fall 2014): 486–523. Used by permission of the University of Chicago Press. Chapter 7 uses excerpts from an earlier essay, “Literary Coteries, Communities, and Networks: The Circulation of Verse at the Inns of Court and in London in Early Stuart England,” in Re-evaluating the Literary Coterie 1580–1830: From Sidney to Blackwood’s, ed. Will Bowers and Hanna Crummé (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 53–73. Used by permission of the publisher, Springer-Verlag. Chapter 8 is a revised and expanded version of an earlier essay, “The Verse Nobody Knows: Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern English Manuscripts,” Huntington Library Quarterly 80, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 201–21. Used by permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press. Chapter 9 is a revised and expanded version of an earlier essay, “Rare or Unique Poems in British Library MS Sloane 1446” in In the Prayse of Writing, Early Modern Manuscript Studies: Essays in Honour of Peter Beal, ed. S. P. Cerasano and Steven W. May (London: British Library, 2012), 236–65. Used by permission of British Library Publishing.

For Alice, with love, over the long haul

Contents

List of Illustrations Transcription Protocols Acknowledgments Preface Archives, Manuscript Sigla, and Other Abbreviations 1 Introduction: The Manuscript Circulation of Poetry in Early Modern England

xi xiii xiv xvi xx

1

PART I

Single Manuscripts in Their Social Environments

35

2 Courtly and Satellite Courtly Culture: Folger MS V.a.89

37

3 The Inns of Court and London: Chaloner Chute’s Poetical Anthology (BL MS Add. 33998)

60

4 Neighborhood, Social Networks, and the Making of a Gentry Family’s Manuscript Poetry Collection: British Library MS Additional 25707

105

5 Oxford University and Beyond: Folger MS V.a.345 and its Manuscript and Print Sources

142

x

Contents

PART II

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating in Different Environments

179

6 “Rolling Archetypes”: Christ Church, Oxford Poetry Collections, and the Proliferation of Manuscript Verse Anthologies in Caroline England

181

7 The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts at the Inns of Court and in London

220

PART III

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Collections

251

8 Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern English Manuscripts

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9 Rare or Unique Poems in British Library MS Sloane 1446

308

10 Fugitive Sonnets in Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections Conclusion Bibliography Index

335 371 374 391

List of Illustrations

4.1

4.2

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4.7

4.8

4.9

Hand A: Excerpt from transcription of John Donne’s “The Extasye,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 57. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Hand B: Excerpt from John Donne’s “Elegia I,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 5v. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Hand C: Excerpt from John Donne’s “Elegya 2,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 8. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Hand D: Excerpt from John Donne’s “An Elegye upon the death of the Ladye Markham,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 29. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Hand E: Excerpt from poem dubiously attributed to John Donne, “Since shee muste goe & I must mourne, come night,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 65. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Hand F: Excerpt from poem to Thomas Pestell subscribed “E.C,” “The hand that mov’d thee (Pestell) thus to pound,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 70. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Hand G: Excerpt from “To the Famous St. of blessed memorye Elizabeth, the humble peticion of her now wretched, and Contemptible, the Comons of England,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 76. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Hand H: Excerpt from an elegy, “On Kinge James,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 79. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Hand J: Excerpt from a poem by “D. Foaks,” “If any have the grace at once to bee,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 91. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

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xii 4.10

4.11

4.12

4.13

4.14

4.15

8.1

List of Illustrations Hand K: Excerpt from a poem attributed to Sir Thomas Aston, “A peecefull mind goes homely cladd,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 91. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Hand L: Excerpt from Richard Corbett’s poem “On the [death of] Queene [Anne],” “Noe not a quach (sad Poet) doubt yow,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 91v. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Hand M: Excerpt from a translation of Juvenal’s tenth satire, “In all the Countryes which from Gades extend,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 111. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Hand N: Excerpt from Sir John Harington’s epigram, “Against Momum for carpinge,” “Scant had I writt xii Lines but I had newes,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 120. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Hand O: Excerpt from anonymous poem, “I am resolved noe more to expose,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 148. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Hand P: Excerpt from anonymous poem, “Is it true I am derided,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 148. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. Folger MS V.a.160, p. 45. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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119 286

Transcription Protocols

I present texts (from both manuscript and print) in a semi-diplomatic form. That is, I modernize u/v and i/j forms, and expand contractions (with the exception of the ampersand, “&”). I convert the long “s” and “ff” used as a magiscule “F” to the modern forms. I transcribe such abbreviations as “Mrs” as “Mistris,” “Mr” as “Master,” “Sr” as “Sir,” “Ld” as “Lord,” “bp” as “bishop.” I show deletions with strikethroughs or, when illegible, with angle brackets. I put emendations and some abbreviations in regular brackets, and signal above-the-line insertions with carets. I retain the light punctuation found in manuscript documents from which my citations derive, converting the old form of a hyphen (“=”) to the modern one. When I cite the first lines of poems from the Folger Index I present them in the modernized forms in which they are found there. Words that might be unfamiliar to modern readers are glossed to the right of lines in which they occur and defined according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Acknowledgments

My debts in the study are many. First, I would like to express my gratitude to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a year-long fellowship in 2005–6 that allowed me to do much of the research for this project. Second, I appreciate the research funding provided over the years by Wayne State University, especially in my Distinguished Professor research account. I respect and I am grateful to the many librarians and archivists who facilitated my research: at the Bodleian Library (now Weston Library), Oxford, and the archives of Corpus Christi College at Oxford, at the Cambridge University Library as well as Trinity College and St. John’s College, at the British Library, at the University of Leeds, Brotherton Collection, at the Folger Shakespeare Library, at the Huntington Library (San Marino), at the Derbyshire, Warwick, and West Yorkshire Record Offices and the Surrey History Centre, at the Westminster Abbey Library, and at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. The greatest personal debt I have is to my occasional collaborator, Steven W. May, who read over and gave me useful feedback on each of the chapters of this study. I am immensely indebted also to Peter Beal, whose work on early modern English manuscripts is foundational and whose friendship I have valued. Other colleagues and friends for whose support I am grateful include (in alphabetical order) Ellen Barton, Cedric Brown, Lesley Brill, Chanita Goodblatt, Joshua Eckhardt, Martin Elsky, Margaret Ezell, Lowell Gallagher, Jaime Goodrich, Achsah Guibbory, Ken Jackson, James Kearney, James Knapp, Jacob Lassner, (the late) Harold Love, Susannah Monta, Robert Miola, Michelle O’Callaghan, Jason Rosenblatt, Michael Scrivener, James Shapiro, Cathy Shrank, Daniel Starza Smith, Alison Shell, Nigel Smith, Mihoko Suzuki, Renata Wasserman, and Henry Woudhuysen. I presented parts of this study, thanks to cordial invitations, at the University of Chicago, UCLA, the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of Miami, the University of Michigan, Yale University, Princeton University, Loyola University (Chicago), Georgetown University, University of

Acknowledgments xv Notre Dame, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Ohio State University, Northern Illinois University, the University of Sheffield, the University of Reading, Cambridge University, the University of Plymouth, University College and King’s College of the University of London, and Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Brazil).

Preface

For the past two decades, following the appearance of my book, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric,1 I have continued my research in English manuscript poetry texts from the early modern period. Many of the essays that resulted from this research were published in edited collections or journals. Some of the pieces I wrote concentrate on particular manuscripts that I have found especially interesting, such as Folger MSS V.a.89 (Ann Cornwallis’s poetry collection), British Library Additional MSS 25707 (the Skipwith family compilation) and 33998 (Chaloner Chute’s professionally produced anthology), Sloane 1446, and Folger V.a.345. Other studies have either looked at the practices of manuscript transmission in specific environments. Most of the essays partly or wholly deal with a topic that has been the main focus of my scholarly attention in recent years, the rare or unique verse found in surviving manuscript documents from the early modern period, those (usually anonymous) poems that are overlooked in literary history, but are representative of the different personal and social uses to which individuals put the verse they composed. I have collected eight of these essays, revised, expanded, and updated them for purposes of this book and added two new essays, Chapter 7, a new study of the circulation of poetic texts at the Inns of Court and its larger urban environment that incorporates some writing from another piece on the literature of the Inns and Chapter 10, which deals with rare or unique sonnets written between the Elizabethan sonnet craze and John Milton’s innovative experiments with the form. Following a general introduction that discusses the practices of the manuscript circulation and compilation of verse in early modern England, I have presented the chapters in three groups: “Individual Manuscripts,” “Multiple Manuscripts Circulating in Different Environments,” and “Rare or Unique Texts in Manuscript Circulation.” Concentrating on poetic texts, the chapters in this study examine different examples of English manuscript culture, including individual verse compilers the environments for poetic composition and collection. Throughout all of the chapters, there are unknown rare or unique texts that have lain hidden in plain sight in surviving documents from the late Elizabethan period to the Restoration.

Preface xvii Over the past several decades manuscript studies in the field of early modern English literature have grown exponentially. Among other scholars, Peter Beal, Harold Love, H. R. Woudhuysen, Mary Hobbs, Julia Boffey, Steven W. May, Joshua Eckhardt, Margaret J. M. Ezell, and Daniel Starza Smith have stimulated new research, offering models for future scholarship.2 The ongoing “Perdita” project of recovering and disseminating early modern English texts written by women has had remarkable effects on the scholarship in the field.3 The British Library annual, English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, which lasted for eighteen volumes from 1989 to 2016, presented a rich variety of studies, encouraging other manuscript research that has appeared in mainline journals and in edited collections of essays.4 William Ringler’s and Steven W. May’s first-line indices of Tudor poetry,5 Peter Beal’s monumental Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts (CELM),6 and the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Union First-line Index of English Poetry, 1100–1900 (which owes much to the pioneering work of Carolyn Nelson, Hilton Kelliher, William A. Ringler, Jr. and Steven W. May)7 are essential research tools. The digitizing projects of Gale Publishing (from the old Harvester Microforms series, Britain’s Literary Heritage), The British Library, the Cambridge University Library, the Leeds University Library (the Brotherton collection), Yale’s Beinecke Library, Harvard’s Houghton Library, The Folger Shakespeare Library and other institutions have provided greater access to archival materials for researchers wishing to work with early modern English manuscript poetry. New discoveries have been made in the manuscript remains of the period; new models have been developed for understanding the relationship of manuscript and print media; new conceptions of the literary and of the larger field of writing have taken shape as the traditional definition of literature implicit in conventional literary histories that were based on printed texts has been questioned and revised. One of the effects of new studies of manuscript texts has been the increase among literary scholars of respect for the work of textual scholars and editors, which is now seen as valuable not just for the production of critical editions of particular authors, but also for our understanding of the social history of texts and the history of reading. In the field of textual studies, the groundbreaking work of Jerome McGann and D. F. McKenzie has allowed us to bridge the gap between traditional textual practices and bibliography on the one hand and what McKenzie has called the “sociology of texts” on the other.8 As texts are seen as historically and materially embedded, our conceptions of textual production, transmission, and reception have become more nuanced, thanks to their work and that of scholars examining the manuscript documents from the early modern period. Literary history has rested on a foundation of texts that appeared in print in their own time and/or later. This has meant that anonymous or named authors who have not had high visibility in print culture have been largely ignored. It also means that our sense of the field of writing has been distorted because what got transmitted in manuscript and what got printed

xviii

Preface

are different in important ways. Surviving manuscript separates and collections—the latter either poetical anthologies or miscellanies of verse and prose—clearly signal the social and occasional character of versecomposition,9 while print publication monumentalizes individual poetic artifacts or collections, usually effacing their social coordinates and thereby decontextualizing the poems. The manuscript environment for poetry was more receptive to ephemeral and occasional texts and some poetic forms, such as the epitaph, the verse letter, the libel, and the funeral elegy, loomed larger in that medium than they did in print culture. In the manuscript system, the line between amateur and professional writers either did not exist or was blurred, while print culture gradually separated the literary as a discursive formation from ordinary communication and authorship was established as a special cultural identity. In terms of poetic composition, the field of writing in the manuscript system was broader than that found in print culture, giving the impression that any literate individual was free to compose verse and effacing the boundary between literary producer and consumer. The manuscript system was participatory: compilers of poetry anthologies could and often did take the opportunity to write poems of their own, sometimes in response to particular texts they recorded, sometimes imitating or revising what came to hand. In this book, there are recurring topics and themes and a consistent view of the place of manuscript poetic texts and their producers and consumers in early modern English culture. This study takes both an eagle’s eye view of the system of manuscript circulation of verse and close scrutiny of particular manuscripts. Chapters 1 and 8 are broad in scope, Chapters 6 and 7 move closer in, dealing with the circulation of texts within and between particular environments, and Chapters 3, 4, 9, and 10 either examine particular manuscript documents as representative of the locations in which they were created or, in the case of the last chapter, focus on the manuscript preservation of a particular literary kind, the sonnet, in texts that are often rare or unique. The general message to contemporary scholars and general readers is that the documents that I and others have examined are essential for our understanding of early modern English literature and culture and they are a rich resource for new discoveries. As more and more manuscripts are digitized and access to archival materials made easier for researchers, manuscript studies should continue to expand and result in a better, more nuanced understanding of the early modern literary production and its sociocultural environment. Notes 1 Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995. 2 See, for example, Peter Beal, In Praise of Scribes: Manuscripts and their Makers in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) and A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology 1450–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University

Preface xix

3 4

5

6 7

8

9

Press, 2008); Harold Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) and English Clandestine Satire 1660–1702 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); H. R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts 1558–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Mary Hobbs, Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts (Aldershot, U.K.: Scolar Press, 1992); Julia Boffey, Manuscripts of English Courtly Love Lyrics in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, U.K.: D. S. Brewer, 1985); Steven W. May, Elizabethan Courtier Poets: The Poems and their Contexts (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1991); Joshua Eckhardt, Manuscript Verse Collections and the Politics of Anti-courtly Love Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Margaret J. M. Ezell, Writing Women’s Literary History (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) and Social Authorship and the Advent of Print (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Harold Love and Arthur F. Marotti, “Manuscript transmission and circulation,” in David Loewenstein and Janel Mueller (eds.), The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 55–80; and Daniel Starza Smith, John Donne & the Conway Papers: Patronage and Manuscript Circulation in the Early Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). The results of this project are available online at https://www.amdigital.co.uk/ primary-sources/perdita-manuscripts-1500-1700 (accessed 16 April 2020). See, for example, Victoria E. Burke and Jonathan Gibson (eds.), Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Writing: Selected Papers from the Trinity/Trent Colloquium (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2004) and Joshua Eckhardt and Daniel Starza Smith, (eds.) Manuscript Miscellanies in Early Modern England (Farnham, U.K. and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014). Steven W. May and William A. Ringler, Jr. (comp.), Elizabethan Poetry: A Bibliography and First-Line Index of English Verse, 1559–1603, 3 vols. (London and New York: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004). See http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/. See https://firstlines.folger.edu;/ William A. Ringler, Bibliography and Index of English Verse Printed 1476–1558 (London: Mansell, 1988) and Bibliography and Index of English Verse in Manuscript 1501–1558 (London: Mansell, 1993); and May and Ringler, Elizabethan Poetry. See Jerome J. McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1983) and D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the sociology of texts (London: The British Library, 1986). For a discussion of the various kinds of social occasions for which verse was composed, see Arthur F. Marotti and Steven W. May, “Manuscript Culture: Circulation and Transmission,” in A Companion to Renaissance Poetry, ed. Catherine Bates (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell, 2018), 78–101.

Archives, Manuscript Sigla, and Other Abbreviations

Add. Ash. BL Bod. Cam. CELM

Additional Ashmole British Library Bodleian Library, Oxford Cambridge University Library Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts https:// celmms.org.uk Don. Donation ELH ELH: A Journal of English Literary History Eng. Poet. English Poetry ESL Early Stuart Libels, Early Modern Literary Studies, Text Series I, ed. Alastair Bellany and Andrew McRae http:// www.earlystuartlibels.net/htdocs/index.html ELR English Literary Renaissance Folger Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. Folger Index The Folger Shakespeare Library Union First-line Index of English Verse, 13th–19th Century (bulk 1500–1800) https://firstlines.folger.edu Harv. Houghton Library, Harvard HLQ Huntington Library Quarterly Hunt. Huntington Library (San Marino, California) Lt q 44 University of Leeds, Brotherton Collection MS Lt q 44 MLR Modern Language Review NLW National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography https://wwwoxforddnb-com OED Oxford English Dictionary https://www-oed-com Osb. Yale, Beinecke Library Osborn Collection PBSA Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America PMLA Publications of the Modern Language Association of America Rawl. Poet. Rawlinson Poetry RES Review of English Studies

Archives, Manuscript Sigla, and Other Abbreviations xxi Ros. SP STC

Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia Studies in Philology A Short Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland… 2nd edn., rev. W. A. Jackson, E. S. Ferguson, and Katharine F. Pantzer, 3 vols. (London: Bibliographical Society, 1976–91)

1

Introduction: The Manuscript Circulation of Poetry in Early Modern England

In early modern England most verse was written not for print publication, but for manuscript circulation. Lyric poetry, for example, was a literary form that was basically regarded as occasional and ephemeral, designed for manuscript transmission first to known readers socially connected in some way to the authors, and then to a wider social world. A poet’s family, friends, and social contacts were the proper recipients of what he or she wrote and many of the texts that found their way into print in poetical miscellanies or individual editions were, actually or by pretense, diverted into that medium, having the character of intercepted texts. Sometimes publishers congratulated themselves on wresting such work out of a socially restricted environment to make it available to broader readership able to profit from it: Richard Tottel, for example, whose influential and much reprinted miscellany (Songes and Sonnettes, Written by the Ryght Honorable Lorde Henry Haward Late Earle of Surrey, and Other [1557]) was precedent-setting, boasted to his readers that, in printing the manuscript-circulated verse of such authors as Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey, he was making available “those works which the ungentle hoarders up of such treasure have heretofore envied thee.”1 Despite the Continental examples of printed poetical collections, such as the sonnet sequences of Italian and French poets from Petrarch through Ronsard, cultural expectations, at least in England, were that lyric poems were private and restricted, rather than public and accessible. Many years ago J. W. Saunders coined the expression “the stigma of print” to refer to the social disapproval incurred by well-born or educated writers if they allowed their verse to be published.2 But there was more than an issue of social degradation involved in the printing lyric poetry; it was that the form itself was unsuitable to broad exposure, a fact that someone such as Emily Dickinson later acknowledged by keeping her own lyrics in her possession.3 Although, over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, print culture finally incorporated lyric poetry as it did other literary genres, making

2

Introduction

it gradually seem more and more acceptable for writers to collect and publish their verse and for editors and publishers to produce single-author editions and anthologies of poems, the system of manuscript transmission of lyric poetry remained as vigorous as it had been in a pre-Gutenberg era. In fact, judging from the documentary remains, there was a resurgence in England of manuscript transcription and collection of verse in the seventeenth century, especially in the period from the early 1620s through the 1640s.4 Authors and compilers in such environments as the university, the Inns of Court, the royal Court, and the houses of the gentry and nobility, as well as in social networks such as those found in London and in the English Catholic subculture produced a great many poetical collections encompassing a range of texts broader than that of the body of canonical literature from the period. Since the processes of canonizing particular authors and works, as well as the writing of literary histories, were so reliant on the products of print culture, many of the pieces we find in surviving manuscript compilations—by either minor or anonymous writers—have been neglected. Composing, transmitting, collecting and arranging poetic and prose texts were activities shared by most early modern literate individuals. Texts were transcribed and passed on in single sheets or as letters,5 on bifolia, and in “quaternions”6 and small quires7 as well as in larger units ready to receive texts their owners deemed important.8 As examples of the circulation of verse in what Harold Love called “separates,”9 there are single sheets such as “A Poem put into my Lady Laitons Pocket by Sir W. Rawleigh,”10 Sir John Harington’s poem left behind the cushion of his godmother, Queen Elizabeth,11 Sir Walter Ralegh’s poem to Elizabeth and the Queen’s reply,12 and John Donne’s single surviving holograph poem, a verse epistle sent to Lady Carey as a letter folded several times to make a small item for transport (Bod. MS Eng. Poet. d.197).13 Separates, including single sheets, were bound together in their own time or later to form manuscript collections. Poems were also sometimes copied into blank, bound codices, “paper books”:14 Laurence Cummings claims, for example, that Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 85, an Elizabethan courtly and university collection was “a bound and foliated book before [John] Finet began making entries.”15 Occasional poems originally sent to particular readers to celebrate births, mourn deaths, convey New Year’s greetings, maintain relationships with patrons and patronesses, express love or friendship, and for other purposes were later gathered in collections along with other serious or recreational pieces. Sometimes the manuscripts themselves signal aspects of the process of literary transmission: poems were passed on by particular individuals, for example, or whole collections were lent for perusal or copying—some, as Henry Woudhuysen claims,16 by booksellers and stationers. Donne’s 1614 request of his friend Sir Henry Goodyer to return to him a manuscript “book” of his verse indicates that a collection of his poetry, at some stage in his life, was assembled by him in a single manuscript volume.17 Stephen Powle wrote a note in his commonplace book anthology

Introduction

3

(Bod. MS Tanner 169) regarding a Nicholas Breton poem entitled “A passionate Sonnet made by the Kinge of Scots uppon difficulties ariseing to crosse his proceeding in love & marriage with his most worthie to be esteemed Queene” (“In Sunny beames the skye doth shewe her sweete”): “Geaven me by Mr Britton who had been (as he sayed) in Scotland with the Kinges Majesty: but I rather thinke they weare made by him in the person of the kinge” (f. 43). The Arundel Harington family manuscript has a section beginning “Certayne verses made by uncertayne autors, wrytten out of Charleton his booke” (f. 43).18 Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 26, which, before binding, was a collection of separates copied over a long period of time in many hands, has a late seventeenth-century note listing nine different people to whom the manuscript was lent (p. vi). In addition to transcribing poems from written exemplars, some manuscripts have texts that were recorded from memory. J. B. Leishman convincingly argues that memorial transcription accounts for some of the dramatic changes one finds in texts of some poems found in manuscript collections.19 This reminds us of the widespread practices of oral recitation or performance in a period in which there was a high degree of residual orality and, as scholars of the drama have recognized, people developed powerful memory skills which modern readers find hard to comprehend. Reading or singing literary texts aloud, often to small groups of friends or family members, was a very common practice and we know that even some very long works, such as Sidney’s Arcadia, were given oral performance.20 The connection of script with orality and the individualistic characteristics of a particular person’s handwriting reinforce the aura of “presence” in the manuscript text, which the printed text lacks.21 Recording poetic texts, was an activity related to traditional practices of commonplacing, the transcribing of passages from one’s reading, often in an alphabetical arrangement under familiar headings that facilitated retrieval and reuse in one’s own writing—invention in the older rhetorical sense of the term.22 In academic and post-academic environments, educated individuals kept commonplace books as a kind of prosthetic memory. In a less formal way, many people kept a looser sort of compilation, gathering a variety of items ranging from household accounts, to medical receipts, to historical and genealogical notes, to copies of letters, poems, and other important texts in circulation within restricted groups as well as within widening circles of transmission. Thus, some manuscript compilations in which we find poetry also contain a variety of miscellaneous materials: John Ramsey’s commonplace book (Bod. MS Douce 280), for example, in addition to poetry, includes “A Rule to find the goulden or prime noumber”; discussion of Cambridge University organization and admissions; a translation of a book of Caesar’s Commentaries; medical receipts; lists of the offices of England and the post-Norman-Conquest kings, lords, knights, bishoprics, and counties; theological, political, and historical comments; a

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partial autobiography and family genealogy; a personal will; a reading list; paternal instructions to his son; and a family coat of arms.23 On a lower social level, some individuals or families compiled “household books,” which bring together utilitarian information and high and low literary texts: for example, the Yorkshire yeoman John Hanson produced such a volume (BL MS Add. 82370).24 Many “catch-all” manuscript miscellanies such as these immerse poems in a varied textual environment. Other manuscripts, however, contain only or almost exclusively poems. If we look at numerous, but relatively few, surviving manuscript poetry anthologies or collections from the early modern period, we discover two kinds of documents: those kept by a single individual and those produced by two or more scribes—either within a family and social circle or within an institutional environment in which many individuals might have access to a manuscript volume being passed around in a group. The Devonshire manuscript of early Tudor verse (BL MS Add. 17492), which circulated among several courtly women and their lovers,25 and the midseventeenth-century academic collection, Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50, in which four hands are represented, are examples of the latter. We might distinguish those documents in which the hands represented are those of amateurs and those that were done by professional scribes. In the latter case, we have personal collections done on commission for the individual wishing to have his or her own poetry anthology as well as those collections composed as presentation copies to friends or social superiors.26 BL MS Add. 33998, which places each poem’s title in a box and draws lines between items, was professionally transcribed for Chaloner Chute by a scribe who also did work for the theater; Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 31, which has verse by Donne, Jonson, Sir John Harington, Sir Henry Wotton, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the Earl of Pembroke, Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, Francis Beaumont, and others, was beautifully produced by the professional Peter Beal describes as the “Feathery Scribe,”27 and Bod. MS Malone 23, a heavily political collection, presents the titles of its poems in a kind of boldface italic; Folger MS V.a.249 is a presentation manuscript of Sir John Harington’s epigrams the author sent in 1605 to the young Prince Henry. Several manuscripts containing large collections of Donne’s verse seem to have been designed for aristocrats: the Leconfield MS (Cam. MS Add. 8467) for the Earl of Northumberland; the Bridgewater MS (Hunt. MS EL 6893) for John Egerton, later Earl of Bridgewater; the Haslewood-Kingsborough MS (Hunt. MS HM 198.1) for Edward Denny, Earl of Norwich;28 and BL MS Harley 4955, which was compiled for the Cavendish family, particularly for Sir William Cavendish, first Earl of Newcastle. Some professionally transcribed manuscripts might have been prepared as fair copy from which printers could set the text of editions they were preparing. Ros. MS 1083/16 has a title page suitable for setting in print: “MISCELLANIES/ OR/ A Collection of Divers Witty and/ pleasant Epigrams, Adages, poems/

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Epitaphes &c: for the recre/ation of the overtravel-/ed sences:/ [ornament]/ 1630:/ Robert Bishop,” followed by a dedicatory epistle on the verso of this page.29 In terms of their content, one might distinguish those manuscripts that are primarily composed of the work of a single author from those (more typical) collections that contain the work of many writers. As examples of the first we have BL MS Egerton 2711, comprising mainly the poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt (including corrections entered in his own hand);30 Folger MS V.a.104, an autograph collection of Lady Mary Wroth’s poems; BL MS Add. 58435, a holograph collection of Sir Robert Sidney’s verse; BL MS Egerton 3165, the authorially-controlled collection of Sir Arthur Gorges’s poetry; Leeds University Library Brotherton Collection MS Lt q 32, which contains the recently rediscovered work of Hester Pulter; BL MS Add. 37157, Sir Edward Herbert’s collection of his verse included in his family papers;31 BL MSS Add. 54566-71, which Peter Beal calls “the most substantial existing authorized manuscript text of any distinguished Elizabethan or Jacobean poet” (Fulke Greville);32 Bod. MS North Add. e.2, a professionally transcribed version of Dudley North’s sonnets;33 Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 325, an autograph manuscript of William Strode’s verse; BL MS Lansdowne 777, the collected verse of William Browne of Tavistock; the collection of John Donne’s elegies, satires, divine poems (along with one of his lyrics and his prose paradoxes and problems) in the “Westmoreland manuscript” (New York Public Library Berg Collection);34 and the Williams and Bodleian manuscripts of George Herbert’s poetry (Dr. Williams Library MS Jones B 62 and Bod. MS Tanner 307), the former containing the poet’s corrections and some pieces entered in his own hand.35 Some multiauthor manuscript anthologies are very large collections. From the Elizabethan period, there are such examples as the Arundel Harington manuscript of Tudor poetry, kept by Sir John Harington of Stepney and his son Sir John Harington of Exton (the author of a book of epigrams, of a translation of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and of a satirical treatise on his invention, the flush toilet, The Metamorphosis of Ajax)—a manuscript from which many pages were removed in the late eighteenth century, but which still contains some 324 poems;36 Humphrey Coningsby’s collection (BL MS Harley 7392), which has 158 poems;37 and Henry Stanford’s anthology, Cam. MS Dd.5.75, which has around 300 items, a few of which are in prose.38 From the early through mid-seventeenth century many large compilations have survived: for example, Nicholas Burghe’s collection (Bod. MS Ash. 38) has some 243 leaves of poems by at least sixty-eight writers; the Skipwith family collection (BL MS Add. 25707) gathers some 280 poems by a wide range of Elizabethan and early Stuart poets;39 the two-part mid-seventeenthcentury anthology compiled by Peter Calfe and his son of the same name (BL MS Harley 6917-18) has 330 poems, most from the Caroline and

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Interregnum periods;40 an anonymous collection originating in Christ Church College, Oxford, Folger MS V.a.345, has over 500 poems in addition to a few prose pieces.41 All of these rival in size the largest of the Elizabethan printed poetical anthologies, A Poetical Rapsody, which, in its 1602 edition, has 176 poems.

Manuscript Poetry in Different Environments Although the manuscript transcription and circulation of poetry took place, largely in the middle and upper classes, across a broad geographical range, we can distinguish several particular social environments with which surviving collections were associated: in particular, though not exclusively, the university, the Inns of Court and the urban precincts surrounding them, the houses of the aristocracy and gentry, and the royal court. Within each of these settings texts were composed, transmitted, and collected by individuals and by groups connected either by blood, friendship, or institutional affiliation. University collections include many Christ Church, Oxford manuscripts such as George Morley’s anthology, Westminster Abbey MS 41; Daniel Leare’s related collection, BL MS Add. 30982; the collection by “J.A.,” BL MS Sloane 1792; and Folger MS V.a.170. Cambridge University manuscripts include BL MS Add. 44963, begun by Anthony Scattergood of Trinity College and Bod. MSS Eng. Poet. f.25 and Tanner 465 and 466. Inns-ofcourt manuscripts include the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenthcentury collection, Ros. MS 1083/15; two closely related manuscripts, BL MSS Add. 25303 and 21433; the Farmer-Chetham MS (Chetham Library, Manchester MS Mun. A.4.150); and the Welshman, Richard Roberts’s collection, Bod. MS Don. c.54.42 BL MS Add. 25707, which is textually important for the study of Donne’s poetry, is a composite manuscript compiled in the family of William Skipwith and his son Henry;43 BL MS Add. 27404 was assembled by two brothers, Oliver and Peter Le Neve; the gentleman Henry Champernoune of Dartington in Devon, who inscribed his name on the first page of the document in 1623, owned a large collection of poems of Donne, Jonson, Wotton, Ralegh and others, Bod. MS Eng. Poet. f.9. Further down the social ladder, there were people who owned manuscript collections of verse: for example, the merchant taylor William Warner, (Bod. MS Rawl. C.86), the family of the mercer Sir Thomas Frowyk (BL MS Harley 541), the physician, Nathaniel Highmore (BL MS Sloane 542), the London pharmacist Richard Glover (BL MS Egerton 2230), the antiquarians John Hopkinson (Bod. MS Don. d.58) and Marmaduke Rawden (BL MS Add. 18044), and the yeomen Thomas Fairfax of Warwickshire (Bod. MS Eng. Poet. b.5)44 and John Hanson of Rastrick, Yorkshire (BL MS Add. 83270).45

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Sometimes compilers of verse moved from one environment to another and their collections registered this fact in their contents. Thus, for example, Margaret Douglas, who was part of a late Henrician courtly circle of men and women represented in the Devonshire manuscript (BL MS Add. 17942), took that collection with her to Scotland, where a son from her second marriage, Lord Darnley (the father of the future king of England, James I), transcribed a poem in it in his own hand.46 John Finet moved between St. John’s College, Cambridge and the Elizabethan court, his anthology of verse, Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 85, showing a combination of verse from both environments.47 Several manuscript collections register the movement from Oxford or Cambridge to London and the Inns of Court: for example, Ros. MS 1083/16 and Bod. MSS Eng. Poet. e.14 and Add. B. 97. The seventeenth-century collection of Chaloner Chute (BL MS Add. 33998), who was active in Parliament and at the Inns of Court as well as socially rooted in his Berkshire estate, shows signs of both urban and country connections.48

Death, Sex, and Politics in Manuscript Verse Compared to what we find in contemporary print publications, the contents of manuscript collections contain a much larger percentage of poems dealing with sex, death, sex, and politics. Perhaps because the manuscript system of transmission was usually tied to particular social networks, we find many more epitaphs and elegies in their contents.49 In fact, some collections contain a huge number of poems about the deaths of known individuals, including members of the upper aristocracy and royalty: for example, Nicholas Burghe’s collection (Bod. MS Ash. 38) has over 200 epitaphs and elegies in a separate section of the manuscript (pp. 167–207). Likewise, BL MS Add. 21433, which shares almost all of its poems with another Inns-of-Court collection, BL MS Add. 25303, also relegates funerary poetry to a separate section (ff. 167-86v). Some collections have elegiac poetry obviously related to the environment shared by the compiler and the persons celebrated in them: Folger MS V.a.345, for example, has several poems expressing grief on the occasion of the loss of respected university figures at Oxford.50 A unique elegy for Francis Beaumont by “G: Lucy” (“I doe not Wonder Beaumont thou art dead” [BL MS Add. 33998, f. 43v]), appears in the manuscript collection of the Skipwiths, who were neighbors and friends of the Beaumonts. One of the most popular poems in manuscript collections was the beautiful lyric Henry King wrote on the occasion of his wife’s death, “An Exequy to his Matchless never to be forgotten Freind” (“Accept, thou Shrine of my Dead Saint”). Other much-copied elegies and epitaphs include the epitaphs on the 1606 death of James I’s infant daughter Mary (“Within this marble casket lies” and “As carefull mothers to their beds doe lay”), James’s own poem on the 1619 death

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of Queen Anne (“Thee to invite the great God sent a star”) and Richard Corbett’s own piece (“No, not a Quash? sad Poets, doubt you”), George Morley’s elegy for King James (“All that have eyes now wake and weep”), William Juxon’s elegy for Prince Henry (“Nature waxing old”), Sir Henry Wotton’s elegy for James I’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (“You meaner beauties of the night”), and poems commemorating the deaths the Countess of Pembroke (“Underneath this sable hearse” [William Browne of Tavistock]), the Countess of Rutland (“I may forget to ear, to drink, to sleep” [Francis Beaumont]), and Lady Markham (“As unthrifts groan in straw for their pawn’d beds” [Francis Beaumont]). Not all epitaphs and elegies, however, are respectfully commemorative (either of peers or of social superiors). The epitaph form in particular was used for comic and satiric purposes—especially when the subject was a social inferior or a disliked social superior or powerful person. Thus the deaths of two different men named Pricke, one at Oxford, the other at Cambridge, occasioned comic verse exploiting the obvious opportunity for puns.51 Richard Corbett wrote a comic epitaph for an Oxford butler named Dawson (“Dawson the Butler’s dead”). There is a nasty epitaph on the death of Lady Lake (“Here lies the brief of badness, vice’s nurse”). The death of Penelope Devereux, first Lady Rich, then the Countess of Devonshire, whose long affair with, then marriage to, Charles Blount, the Duke of Devonshire produced five children, occasioned a nasty epitaph about her supposedly inordinate sexual appetite. In one manuscript it reads: On the Lady Rich Heer lyes the Lady Penelope Rich, Or the Countes of Devonshire, chuse ye which One stone contents her, loe what death can doe. That in her life was not content with two. (Folger MS V.a.345, p. 28) The death of the most powerful late Elizabethan and early Jacobean minister, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, produced some vicious verse mocking his morals and physical deformity.52 It is not surprising, given the large number of manuscripts associated with such all-male environments as the university and the Inns of Court, that so many of the ephemeral pieces recorded in such anthologies deal with sex, usually in joking and misogynistic ways. Obscenity was not the main target of censorship in the period— though Marlowe’s translation of Ovid’s Amores fell under the 1599 bishops’ ban of satiric and dangerously political literature and some of Donne’s more obscene elegies were excluded from the 1633 printed edition

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of his poetry. It is clear, however, that the manuscript medium was more receptive than was print to verse with bold sexual content.54 And so we find a comic dialog poem about a sexual encounter between a man and a woman who are conscious of guests engaged in more polite activities elsewhere in her the house (“Nay pish, nay phew, nay faith and will you, fie”), a piece that appears in over twenty-eight manuscripts, and then was printed after the middle of the seventeenth century in two printed anthologies, The Harmony of the Muses (1654) and Sportive Wit (1656). Folger MS V.a.399, as manuscript with a large number of obscene pieces, has a copy of the poem that probably inspired “Nay pish,” Thomas Nashe’s “Choice of Valentines,” here titled “Nashe’s Dilldo” (ff. 53v-57). It also has another piece about a farting contest between a lady and her maid (f. 10v). Folger MS V.b.110 has a bawdy poem that poses a riddle to a mistress who then answers it: A Riddle Answer Come on sweete love & let mee know What thing it is that takes delight And strives to stand yet cannot goe And feeds the mouth that cannot bite It is a kind of loveing sting A pricking & a peircing thing Tis Venus wanton holy wand That hath no feete, & yet can stand It is a pen faire Helen tooke To write in her 2 leafed booke, Tis a true familier spright That mayds do conjure in the night It is a Truchion mayds do use A bedstaffe wanton women chuse. Yt is a graft borne on on the head A staffe to make a Cuckolds bed, It is a thing both deafe & blinde. Yet narrow wayes in th’ darke wil finde It seemes a dwarfe in breath & length But is a Gyant in his strength It is a shaft of Cupids Cut, To rove & shoot at pricks or but, Which every woman by her wil Would keepe within her quiver still, The bravest lasse that ere tooke life For love of this became a wife. (pp. 60–61)

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This poem’s phallocentrism is not surprising, given the predominantly male readership of most manuscript collections.55 Folger MS V.a.96, a London collection, has a rare and unusual poem that offers serious advice about how to make love to a woman: I’st not in love the way to perfect blisse Tenderly to take what most desired is. When thou hast found the place and cann discover Where her content doth lye then as a Lover Should blush not to handle, touch, feele and finger Dalliance doth most delight when most wee linger Behold her eyes like sparkling fire they tremble Whose lightnes brightnes doth the sun resemble Daunceing upon the waves bow downe thy eare Those gentle murmeringes & complaint to heare These feigned sights and sweet wordes which shee Out of her panting brest shall breath to thee But oh, take heed least thou too fast do runn Least thy joyes end ere hers are scarse begun Both both together strive and both endeavour Your kisses motions just in number ever Then are long sportes perform’d in perfect measure When both doe feele one paine & both one pleasure. (ff. 73v-74) Offering advice to men about how to adjust their love-making to accommodate the difference between the pace of male and female sexual arousal, this poem is unusual in its attention to female sexual responsiveness. There are many misogynistic epigrams and other short obscene pieces in manuscript collections: for example, the poems about the allegedly libidinous and ugly widow Mrs. Mallet (Corbett’s “Have I renounc’d my faith or basely sold” and “Skelton some rhymes, good Elderton a ballett”), an object of ridicule for Christ Church poets in the 1620s. Some pieces mock women from lower-class and/or country backgrounds. One rare, 186-line obscene narrative poem found in Chaloner Chute’s anthology, BL MS Add. 33998, “The Merkin Maker” (ff. 53-55v) portrays an innocent young country woman who seeks out a pubic-hair-wig maker, who then comically fits her with his product and sexually exploits her:56 such a work was designed for a readership of male urban sophisticates receptive both to misogynistic humor and expressions of class snobbery. Finally, one of the most popular poems in manuscript circulation was Thomas Carew’s “A Rapture” (“I will enjoy thee now my Celia, come”), a 166-line display of witty eroticism that assumes its audience’s familiarity not only with such love elegies as Donne’s “To his

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Mistress Going to Bed” but also with that most pornographic example of visual and textual eroticism, the woodcuts of a series of sexual positions by Marcantonio Raimondi that accompanied editions of Aretino’s Sonetti Lussoriosi.57 Given the strong libel laws, which punished not just those who lied about, but anyone merely defaming, an individual, even if what was written was true, the really dangerous items in manuscript collections were political libels, especially since one could be prosecuted for mere possession of such texts. Verse critical of contemporary political figures, which would not have been approved for publication, found a home in the system of manuscript transmission, serving some of the purposes of manuscript and print news-media.58 Although there are Elizabethan examples of libelous or dangerously political verse—poems such as the libel against William Bashe (victualler of the navy), libels against Oxford and Cambridge figures,59 and a poem about international politics, “The French Primero”60—the early Stuart period produced a much larger body of poetry of this sort.61 The manuscript system of literary transmission was a relatively safe environment for the dissemination of political libels and other material that might have fallen victim to press censorship. Poems criticizing prominent political figures such as Sir Robert Cecil and the Duke of Buckingham circulated widely in manuscript.62 Alastair Bellany’s and Andrew McCrae’s online edition of early Stuart libels testifies to the vitality of manuscript political verse in this period.63 Bod. MS Don. c.54, for example, has several libels: “A libell upon Mr Edw[ard] Cooke, then Atturney general and sithance Cheife Justice of the Comon pleas upon some disagreement between him & his wife being widow of Sir W[illia]m Hatton Kt. and daughter to the now Earle of Exeter then Sir Tho[mas] Cecill” (“Cocus the Pleader hath a Lady wedd” [f. 6v]), followed by four more on the same topic; “A Libell” (“Admire-all weaknes, wronges, the right” [f. 7]), against the Earl of Essex’s enemies; “A dreame alludinge to my L[ord] of Essex, and his adversaries” (“Where Medwaye greetes old thamesis silver streames” [ff. 19-20r]); a “Libel against Robert Cecill” (“Proude and ambitious wretch that feedest on naught but faction” [f. 20]); “A libell against Somerset” (“Poore Pilott thou art like to lose the Pinke” [f. 22v]), concerned with the Frances Howard/Earl of Somerset marriage scandal; and “A libell against Oxford upon their first entertainment of the kinge” (“When the king to Oxford came” [f. 25]). Bellany’s and McCrae’s collection of early Stuart libels from manuscript sources (ESL) includes some late Elizabethan poems, particularly those dealing the unfortunate careers of the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Ralegh, before turning to anti-James/anti-Scots pieces and poems on Parliament/Crown conflicts, the death of Sir Robert Cecil, the Somerset/ Howard marriage scandal and Overbury murder, the execution of Sir

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Walter Ralegh in 1618 (interpreted as a political martyrdom), the rise, exploits, and assassination of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the impeachment of Sir Francis Bacon, the Spanish Match and international religious politics, the scandalous sexual behavior of the Earl of Castlehaven, and other, miscellaneous topics. Other, not strictly libelous, pieces in manuscript circulation deal with contemporary domestic and international political situations: for example, “Upon the breach between the King & the Subject, at the dissolution of the Parliament, March 1628” (“The wisest King did wonder” [Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 26, f. 8v]) and a poem related to the same context, “Our state’s a Game at cards, the councell deale” (Bod. MS Ash. 36/37, f. 174v.).64 One of the most troubling of the political poems in the period was the so-called “Commons Petition” (“If bleeding hearts dejected souls find grace”), a piece that captured the nostalgia for the reign of Elizabeth and expressed strong anti-Stuart sentiment that persisted through both the Jacobean and Caroline periods.65 Several of the poems of John Hoskins, the active parliamentarian and wit who earlier collaborated with colleagues in composing “The Parliament Fart,” was imprisoned for his threateningly critical speech in 1614 Parliament, addressed topical political issues and the question of free speech in much circulated verse.66 Other poems that were relevant to the political and religious struggles of the period proved quite popular in the manuscript system. Take, for example, the long poem by that prolific Christ Church, Oxford poet Richard Corbett, “Iter Boreale” (“Four clerks of Oxford, doctors two and two”), a piece that survives in some thirty-seven manuscripts, opening the collection of several of them (for example, BL MSS Add. 37683 and Sloane 1446, Bod. MSS Eng. Poet. e.14 and Rawl. Poet. 206). It eventually found its way into print, through the agency of John Donne, Jr., in the (poor) 1657 and 1658 editions of Corbett’s poems. Written shortly after the 1618 Midlands journey it narrates, it is an anti-Puritan work reflecting Corbett’s ecclesiastical conservatism, but it continued to be copied through the 1620s and 1630s in manuscript poetical collections not only because it was associated with a body of other Christ Church poetry but also because it remained relevant to the struggles between conservative and radical religious factions in the period leading up to the English Civil Wars. Many anti-Puritan and anti-Parliament poems were circulated by Royalist poets and compilers in the pre-Civil War and Civil War and Interregnum periods: the Calfe manuscript, BL MS Harley 6917-18, for example, has many pieces of this sort. We find in two different manuscripts a long poem on the assassination of the politically oppositionist Thomas Scott, “A distracted Elegy on the most execrable murther of Tho [mas] Scott, Preacher; who was kill’d by an English soldyer, in a Church Porch at Utrecht, as he entred to performe divine service” (BL MS Add. 33998, ff. 90-96v)—a 444-line piece found also in Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 160 (ff. 5–10).67 Scott was made into a Protestant martyr who opposed the

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Spanish Match and Jacobean foreign policy. The conspiracy-theory explanation of his death is that he was the victim of a Jesuit plot, not simply of a mentally deranged soldier.

Shorter Poetry in Manuscript Collections One of the notable features of personal anthologies is the heavy proportion of epigrammatic poetry—especially epitaphs. These poems are of two sorts, comic/satiric and serious. Sometimes sharing a collection with prose characters, these poems bespeak a desire to capture the social and ethical essence of actual or representative persons, to assert a kind of mastery by way of placing and controlling others in a complex social world to which the compiler belonged, whether it was the university, the court, the Inns of Court, or London, for example. Take, for instance, the large collection of poems, Folger MS V.a.345, assembled by an unidentified person whose educational background seems to have been at Oxford, and who had an especial interest in medicine and medical professionals. The popularity of the epigram in manuscript collections was due to several reasons. First, this kind of verse was especially attractive to male writers and readers: it allowed them to be plainspoken, critical and satiric, and wisely pithy, as well as to be obscene, joking, misogynistic, and snobbish. Second, the form was traditionally quite flexible, usable for epistolary and epitaphic uses in addition to its other purposes. Third, epigrams, especially those with recognizable targets, were dangerous to print and so safer in the more socially restrictive manuscript environment. Fourth, epigrams were easier than longer poems to memorize and reproduce on one’s personal collection. Fifth, and perhaps the most significant factor, given the way many manuscript compilations had blank portions of some pages, original or later scribes found these receptive to short poems that would fit into the space available: horror vacui, or at least a sense of thrift, affected many compilers in their use of the medium.68 Typically, manuscripts contain large numbers of these “filler poems.” Interestingly, someone with the initials “F. V.” inserted at the bottom of one of the pages of Thomas Manne’s manuscript collection, BL MS Add. 58215: Nature abhorres Vacuitie And so doe I For I am Natures pride, and will This voyd page fill. Leafe thou before wast but a blanke now thou maist thanke

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Introduction my pen, but doe not; for unless thou this expresse I serve your Mistress still there’s emptiness. (f. 72v)

Perhaps someone to whom Manne lent the manuscript took the opportunity to enter a poem in available space.

Women and the Manuscript System Commonplace-book miscellanies and manuscript poetical collections were mostly kept by men, especially in such all-male environments as the university and the Inns of Court. Scholars looking for evidence of women’s literary activities in the early modern period first turned to the print record to direct attention to such authors as Isabella Whitney, Emilia Lanyer, Mary Wroth, and Katherine Philips, but, as Margaret Ezell and others have pointed out, the manuscript remains from this era reveal a much wider range of involvement than does print.69 The “Perdita” project of recovering women’s writings in manuscript culture has uncovered women’s extensive involvement in manuscript composition, transmission, and compilation—both of prose and poetical texts.70 Women, such as Anne Cornwallis (Folger MS V.a.89);71 Margaret Bellasis (BL MS Add. 10309), Henrietta Holles (BL MS Harley 3357), Elizabeth Lyttleton (Cam. MS Add. 8460),72 Lady Anne Southwell (Folger MS V.b.198),73 Eleanor Gunter (Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 108), and Constance Aston Fowler (Hunt. MS HM 904,74 owned or compiled collections, and some recorded their own and other women’s poetic compositions in this medium. The much-studied Devonshire manuscript (BL MS Add. 17492), which circulated among several women of the late Henrician court, has the verse of Margaret Douglas which was written in the context of her tragic romantic relationship with Lord Thomas Howard.75 In Folger MS X.d.177, Elizabeth Clarke transcribed one of her own poems, which she claims she wrote at the age of twenty (“you craggie rockes & mountains hie” [f. 8]). As Victoria Burke has pointed out, Clarke also transcribed a lyric from Thomas Stanley’s Poems (1651), “I love thee not cause thou art fair” (f. 8v), rewriting some of its lines to counteract its misogyny.76 Some manuscripts were produced in whole or in part for women readers. This was probably the case for Folger MS V.a.89.77 The collection of eighty-seven of Richard Crashaw’s poems in BL MS Add. 33219 done in a neat scribal hand was designed for a woman, who is addressed as “Fair one.”78 Bod. MS Firth e.4 was done for Lady Harflete, beginning with a dedicatory poem to her.79 The collection of secular and religious verse this manuscript presents is assumed to be suitable to a noble patroness who has the sophistication and aesthetic

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sensitivity to appreciate what is being offered to her. A very different collection, BL MS H 3357, copied by the playhouse scribe Ralph Crane, was done for Henrietta Hollis, but its contents are religious and devotional, the kind of verse deemed appropriate for a young woman’s moral and religious education. Some poems by women show up in men’s poetry collections. Poems by or attributed to Queen Elizabeth appear in several manuscripts.80 In Harv. MS Eng. 626, a poetry collection owned in 1640 by Anthony St. John, we find a piece by Lady Dorothy Shirley, the sister of the third Earl of Essex, a Catholic woman connected to a Catholic social and literary coterie:81 Why did you faine both sighs and teares to gaine My hart from mee, and afterwarde disdaine To thinke upon the oaths you did protest As if mens soules were to bee pawn’d in jest. I cannot thinke soe lively any Art Could frame a passion soe farr from the hart. Doth not your hart knowe what your tongue doth saye? Or doe they both agree for to betraye. Poore weomen, that believe that faithlesse you Speake what you thinke, because themselves are true But you like to an Eccho doe I feare Repeate the wordes, which you from others heare And ne’re speake that which from your hart proceedes Like noble mindes, whose wordes fall short their deedes. Then lett these lines this favoure from you gaine Either to love, or not att all to faine This is noe more, then honour ties you to Tis for your owne sake I would have you true For if your worth you once with falsehood staine When you speake truth, all will beleive you faine. Finis L. Dorothy Sherley (ff. 17v-18) This piece also survives in three other manuscripts.82 One of the most remarkable features of the manuscript system of verse transmission and compilation is the presence of a very large number of anonymous rare or unique poems—some, no doubt, by women.

Scribes, Compilers and the Freedom of the Manuscript System The presence of a large body of unique and/or anonymous poems in surviving manuscript documents points to the activities of scribes and

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compilers in shaping their collections. The manuscript system of literary transmission encouraged responsiveness on the part of those receiving texts from others. The sharp lines between author and reader, or producer and consumer, that mark print culture were not in place in this environment. Scribes and compilers were not only free to alter, rearrange, supplement, imitate, conflate, excerpt, ascribe (sometimes misascribe), title or retitle, parody or answer the texts they received but also to record their own poetic compositions—that is to exercise a degree of collaborative and co-creative participation. In one manuscript, for example, Donne’s poem “The Will” was rewritten to make it into a poem in regular couplets, but there are also other variants that might have been caused by misremembering a memorized text (rather than because of copyist errors): A Lovers Testament dying for Love Before I grone my last gaspe, let me breath Great Love: some legacies I here bequeath. My eyes to Argus if my eyes can see If they be blind, the[n] Love I give them the. My toung to fame, to ambushes my eares, To women or the sea, I give my teares. Thou love hast me long e’re this to fore By making me serve her who’d twenty more, And that I should give what I had to such, And to none else but those that had too much. My constancy I to the Plannets give My truth to them, who at the court doe live./ My ingenuity, my opennesse To Jesuits: Buffounes my pensiven[e]sse. My spleene to any that abroad hath beene. My money give I to a Capuchine. Thou love did teach me, by appointing me To love wher love, should not rewarded be. [stanza omitted] My reputation I bequeath to those Which were my friends, my industry to foes. [2 ll. missing] To nature all that I in rime have writ And to my companie I give my wit. Love tho^u^ wast partiall making me adore Her who begot this love in me before. Taught me to thinke that I did give, when I Did but restore my lent felicitie. To him for whom the passing bell next tolles

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I give my phisicke books my writing toules. My morall councells I to Bedlem give My brazen mettalls unto them which live In want of bread. to them which passe among All forreiners, I give my English toung. Thou love by making me deerely love one who thinkes her Love a fit proportion For such as are but young in foolish love Thus disproportioning my guiftes disprove. (BL Add 10309, ff. 50v-51; changes indicated in boldface) In two other manuscripts there are examples of the rewriting and imitation of Donne’s “A Valediction: forbidding mourning”: a poem ascribed to Simon Butterix (or “Butteris”) in Bod. MS Ash. 38 (“As dying saintes who sweetly pass away” [p. 121]) and an anonymous author’s refiguring of its famous compass image in a new poem, “The man and wife that kinde and loving are” (Folger MS V.a.345, pp. 44–45).83 In a mid-seventeenth-century manuscript now in the Houghton Library at Harvard, we come across the following lyric: To what a cumbersome unrulinesse And burdenous corpulence my love is growne; But that I did to make it lesse And keepe it in proportion, Give it a Dyett, made it feede upon That which Love worst endures, Discretion, Above one sighe a daye I allow’d him not Of which my fortunes, and my faults had part And yf sometimes by stealth, hee gott A shee sigh from my Mistresse hart And thought to feast mee; then I lett him see ‘Twas neither verie sound, nor mea[n]te to mee Helpe Mistresse, Helpe, the flames of my desire Have sett my frozen patience on fire While I with teares doe seeke to quench the same My sighs doe fann, and kindle more the flame O from your Corall lipp, lett Nectar flowe For nothing else will putt it out I knowe. Finis (Harv. MS Eng. 626, ff. 77v-78) The piece consists of the first two of the five stanzas of John Donne’s “Loves Diet” and an additional six lines from an unknown source.84

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Some poems in the manuscript system were open to literary supplements. For example, Sir John Harington’s popular epigram on a knight’s telling his wife she is unconsciously exposing herself while sitting with her legs apart, “A virtuous lady sitting in a muse,” appears in some thirty-six different manuscripts, expanded in one of them by four more lines, with the marginal annotation “A couplet or two fastened to Sir John Harrington his epigram, to do his Town’s knight yeoman service” (Folger MS V.a.339, f. 275).85 In an Oxford anthology, Bod. MS Eng. Poet. e.14, there is a supplement to Sir Henry Wotton’s poem for Princess Elizabeth, ”You meaner beauties of the night,” to which the scribe refers: “Two other Staves added by Another” (f. 68v). Sir Walter Ralegh’s lyric, “Farewell falce love, thou oracle of lies,” grew in size in the course of manuscript transmission from eighteen to thirty lines.86 On a grander scale, the satirical political poem, “The Parliament Fart,” written during the time of the discussion of the possible political union of Scotland and England during King James I’s first Parliament (1604-10), continued to accrete additional couplets and, passing beyond the time of its original occasion, grew in its longest surviving version to 244 lines.87 In some manuscript poetry collections, we find interesting examples of poems that have been produced by conflating two different texts. For example, in Ros. MS 1083/16, p. 256, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 106 is joined to a non-Shakespearean poem associated with someone who has been identified as a possible addressee of the young-man section of the sonnet collection, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, creating a new piece entitled “On his Mistress Beauty.”88 Shakespeare’s sonnets may have been associated with Pembroke’s own poetry and the nonShakespearean part of this piece appeared in the 1660 edition of Poems Written by the Right Honourable William Earl of Pembroke … Many of which are answered by way of Repartee, by Sr Benjamin Ruddier. However the two poems came to be conflated, their presentation as a single lyric is a sign of the flexibility of the manuscript system and of its looser attitude toward authors’ prerogatives and literary authority. There are, of course, many examples in the manuscript collections of poetic excerpts from larger poems, in which case the sentiments expressed or the felicity of the expression were valued as more important than the integrity of the complete poems. Sometimes poems are reduced in size: for example, in Sir John Perceval’s collection (BL MS Add. 47111), William Strode’s thirty-eight-line poem, “Look how the russet morn exceeds the night,” is shortened to a twenty-line piece (f. 4); in Ros. MS 1083/16 lines 53–70 of John Donne’s “The Perfume” are recorded as a stand-alone poem entitled “One Proving False” (pp. 303–4). In BL MS Harley 3991, there is a short section labeled “Donne’s quaintest conceits” (ff. 113-14v) consisting of excerpts from various Donne poems; in an earlier part of the manuscript, there are short excerpts from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice

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(ff. 83v-84). This kind of treatment of literary texts is also found in those printed volumes such as Puttenham’s Art of English Poesy (1589) or in such collections of poetical excerpts as Belvedere: or the Garden of the Muses (1600) and England’s Parnassus (1600). The seventeenth-century compiler of Folger MS V.a.148, probably a student, recorded three whole poems and twenty-eight shorter or longer excerpts from Shakespeare’s Sonnets, apparently copied from John Benson’s 1640 edition.89 John Ramsey was moved to write an imitation/paraphrase of Spenser’s Amoretti LXIV in his miscellaneous collection of verse and prose, Bod. MS Douce 280, “To the Fayrest. A Sonnet. In Eandem dominae suae” (“Survaying with a curious serchinge eye” [f. 35]), signing the item “Poore J. R.”90 Elsewhere in the manuscript he assumes a Spenserian pastoral persona, “Sheephearde Montanus” in two other poems, the second of which is followed by a transcription of Spenser’s own “Tears of the Muses,” then another of Ramsey’s pastoral lyrics (“Sheepheardes confesse with me” [f. 43v]), Spenser’s “Visions of Petrarch,” and another of his own pastoral pieces, “Montanus the Sheephearde his love to Flora” (“I serve sweete Flora brighter then Cinthias light” [f. 45v]).91 Ramsey signaled his attraction to Spenser in imitating him stylistically. As another example of poetic imitation, in the Calfe collection there is a poem modeled on Ben Jonson’s popular lyric from Epicoene, “Still to be neat, still to be dressed”: A Motion to pleasure Still to affect, still to admire yet never satisfy desire with touch of hand, or lypp, or that which pleaseth best, I name not what, like Tantalus I pining dye taking Loves dainties at the eye; Nature made nothing but for use, and fairest twere a grosse abuse to her best worke, if you it hold un-used, like misers ill gott gold, or keep it in a virgin scorne like rich Roabes that are seldome worne. (BL MS Harley 6917, f. 41) This was written in the spirit of the original, but another response to Jonson’s poetry circulated as a parodic version of a stanza from one of his poems to “Charis”: Have you seene a blackheaded Magott,

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Introduction A crawling one a deade Dogge? Or an old Witch with a fagott, A swayling of an Hedge-hogge? Have you smelt Cauf-bobby tosted Or a shipskin roasted: Or have smelt to the Babe in the whittle, Or the Leaper in the spittle? Have you tasted the Sabin tree? O so blacke, O so rough, O so sowre is Shee! (Folger MS V.a.170, p. 30)92

This piece is followed by the stanza from the Jonson poem it parodies, here entitled “A Sonnet”: Have you seene the white Lilly grow, Before rude hands have toucht it? Have you markt the fall of the snow, Before the soyle have smucht it? Have you felt the woole of a beaver, Or Swans downe ever? Have you smelt the Budde on the briar: Or the Nard in the fire? Or have tasted the bagge of the Bee? O so white: O so soft: O so sweete is shee! (Folger MS V.a.170, pp. 30–31) Answer-poems were a familiar fixture of the manuscript system and are preserved in many compilations.93 From the Elizabethan era, in Ann Cornwallis’s poetry collection, Folger MS V.a.89, there is a poem by the imperious Earl of Oxford, “Were I a king I might command content,” that is followed immediately by a piece critical of the Earl’s social snobbery, “Wearte thou a king? yet not command content” (p. 7).94 There is another example of class antagonism manifested in the response to Sir Edward Dyer’s lyric arguing for the ability of people of all levels of society to experience love, “The lowest trees have tops, the ant her gall”: Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 148 has “The answer to Mr Diers dittie” (f. 106) arguing for the social exclusiveness of refined love experience, a poem that is reproduced in the printed poetical miscellany, A Poetical Rapsody (1602). Lady Mary Cheke wrote a feminist rejoinder to Sir John Harington’s epigram “Of a certain man,” “That no man yet could in the bible find.”95 Queen Elizabeth gave a playfully condescending reply to Ralegh’s “Fortune hath taken thee away, my Love,” “Ah silly pugg, wert thou so sore afrayd?”96 and Sir Thomas Heneage answered Ralegh’s “Farewell false love, thow oracle of lyes” with “Most welcome love, thow

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mortall foe to lies.” Christopher Marlowe’s “Passionate Shepherd” (“Come live with me and be my love”) was answered by “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” (“If all the world and love were young”), a piece attributed posthumously to Sir Walter Ralegh and found both in manuscript (Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 148) and print (England’s Helicon [1600]; Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler [1653]). Sir Walter Ralegh’s “The Lie” (“Go soul, the body’s guest”) elicited several politically intense replies.98 Richard Corbett’s “To the ladies of the new dress” and Henry Reynolds’s “A Blackmore Maid wooing a fair boy” both elicited answer poems, a practice common in an academic environment where students were used to composing competitive verse on set themes. Corbett, Strode and Jeramiel Terrent, all Christ Church poets, wrote poems on the topic of the stained-glass windows of Fairford Church, a target of Puritan iconoclasm.99 John Grange’s poem, “Black cypress veils are shrouds of night,” which appears in some eighteen surviving manuscripts, is a ventriloquized female answer to Richard Corbett’s poem, which criticizes fashion-mongering women, but Corbett himself penned a “Reply to the Answer” (“If nought but love-charms power have”). Reynolds’s poem, itself a translation of a Latin poem by George Herbert, was answered by Henry King’s “The Boy’s answere to the Blackmore” (“Black Mayd, complayne not that I fly”).100 Ben Jonson’s poem about retiring from the stage after the widespread criticism of his play, The New Inn, (“Come leave the loathed stage”) was answered by his “adopted son,” Thomas Randolph (“Ben do not leave the stage”) as well as by Thomas Carew (“Tis true, dear Ben, thy just chastising hand”).101 Corbett’s “Anti-Annniversary” (“Even so dead Hector twise was triumphed on”), was afterward answered by Daniel Price’s “Soe to Dead Hector boyes may doe disgrace.” An additional answer to Price’s poem was made by another Christ Church, Oxford poet, Brian Duppa, “Since Sussex Dragon & Low Countrey newes.” John Cleveland’s satiric poem on the 1643 Westminster Assembly (“Flea-bitten synod! an assembly brewed”), which appears in BL MS Harley 6918, ff. 70–71, is answered by two different poems that appear earlier in the collection: “Saltmarsh of Magdal[en College]: against Clevelands new commencement” (“Leave off vaine Satyrist, and doe not thinke” [f. 40]), a piece that then elicited an answer “by Wilde of Saint Johns [College]” (“Why how now sacred Epigrammatist” [f. 40v]). Some manuscripts preserve the record of epistolary verse exchange. BL MS Add. 47111, a commonplace book of Sir John Perceval’s, has a poem by Lot Peere, of Audley End (“Had Mr Percivall perceivd it well”), answered by the compiler (“Had Mr Peere but learnt that money aws”), the second, as the title notes, “To the Tune of Honesti fures or Nihil perdidimus” (ff. 80v-81v, 82v). Perceval’s manuscript, which the British

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Library catalog states was “probably compiled while at Magdalene College, Cambridge: 1646–1649,” mainly consists of unascribed poems, but it also has “exercises in Latin and Greek verse, including sacred epigrams” as well as “copies of family and other correspondence, partly in Latin.”102 Scribal or compiler poetry is a normal part of the documentary record. Those who copied, altered, supplemented, or imitated poems they received often decided to write their own independent verse for inclusion in their collections. Often this poetry was directly related to the scribe’s or compiler’s social relationships, as in Perceval’s case. Humphrey Coningsby recorded several of his own poems in his large anthology (BL MS Harley 7392), including an epistolary offer of love, “my curious Eyes (whose wary syght)” (f. 32v).103 Another Elizabethan compiler, John Lilliat, inserted his own poems in his anthology, Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 148, among which are two lyrics inspired by Marlowe’s “Passionate Shepherd”: “Upon a kiss given” (f. 97v-98) and “The S[h]heperdisse her Replie” (f. 100v-1).104 Henry Stanford set aside space in his anthology (Cam. MS Dd.5.75) for his own poetry and that of his pupils, including sonnets he wrote to accompany books he sent as gifts to his female aristocratic employers.105 Compilers often composed epitaphs and elegies about friends or family members. For example, Edward Bannister put two of his poems about his deceased wife in his manuscript compilation (BL MS Add. 28253), the first entitled “A tragicall Rememberance of the death of Mrs. Marye Banystere who dyed atte Putteny in Bury uppon Ester date in Anno Dm. 1587 of the small poxe: written by her husband” (“My penne ys broken quyll Rawght frome the wynges of Deathe” [f. 4]). At the end of BL MS Harley 6917-18, Peter Calfe (the younger?) has “An Elegy: On the much Lamented Death of his Ever honourd friend George Gore Esquire” (“Since thou art fledd, nere more for to appeare” [f. 96]) as well as eight other elegiac poems, including one for his own wife that was obviously inspired by the popular elegy by Henry King, many of whose poems were transcribed in the collection.106 In the Skipwith family manuscript, a five-part compilation mainly transcribed over several decades by or for Sir William Skipwith and his son Sir Henry, we find some of their own verse. Sir William’s poems register the stylistic influence of both Donne and Jonson, the first of whose poems form a large group in the early part of the collection.107 Nicholas Burghe’s four poems in his collection (Bod. MS Ash. 38) embody some of the different poetic styles and idioms of the verse he selected for his manuscript, a fact that left him open to a charge of plagiarism apparently leveled at him by the recipient of one of his poems, to whom he replied: You cal’d me Theefe, when I presumed to Raise

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Thes few rude Lynes, thy bewtye for to Prayse Tho stol’st my hart; why then tis past beliefe ytt tis not I; but Thou that arte the theefe. (Bod. MS Ash. 38, p. 23) In the act of copying, a scribe internalized and appropriated the words and the styles of the poems in their possession. Thus, especially in a period in which modern notions of originality were not the norm, the boundary between others’ work and one’s own was blurred.

Poems Copied from Printed Books One of the common practices in manuscript culture, especially in the seventeenth century is the transcription of poems from printed books. Earlier works, such as those that formed Tottel’s Miscellany, migrated from manuscript to print; similarly, the posthumous print editions of the poetry of Donne (1633) and Thomas Carew (1640) gathered work that had remained in manuscript circulation during the poet’s lifetime. The flow of texts, however, could be reversed, with work in print returning to manuscript. For example, BL MS Harley 6910, as Katherine Gottschalk has shown, was primarily based on printed texts.108 BL MS Add. 34064 has poems copied from the 1593 edition of Sidney’s Arcadia, and from Spenser’s The Ruins of Time and Mother Hubberd’s Tale from the 1591 volume of his Complaints.109 The Burley Manuscript (Leicestershire County Council MS DG7/LIT 2), which has a selection of poetry and prose, has many passages from Edmund Spenser’s The Ruins of Time, undoubtedly copied from a printed edition.110 Folger MS V.a.345 contains dozens of epigrams copied from printed editions. Bod. MS Ash. 38 has, among other items, many pieces lifted from the 1605 edition of William Camden’s Remaines. Folger MS V.a162, a verse miscellany probably compiled at Oxford, not only has copies of Shakespeare’s Sonnets 32 (f. 26) and 71 (f. 12v) but also, from other print sources, copies of Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti IV appropriated for new use as “A Sonnett on the new yeere 1639” (f. 22v), George Herbert’s “The Altar” (f. 12v) and “Redemption” (f. 15v), poems by Thomas Watson, Henry Parrot, and William Habington (ff. 13v, 21v, 23v), as well as a piece “On Sir Thomas Overbury” (“Once dead and twice alive, death could not frame” [f. 14v]), which was published in the 1616 posthumous edition of Overbury’s The Wife. A very large number of the other poems in this collection are rare, if not unique, pieces, suggesting that the two main scribes responsible for this manuscript wrote some of them—for example, “To his dear friend Mr Stephen Jackson” (“Brother for so I call thee, not because” [f. 12]) and “On the wor[ship]full Sir Paul Pinder” (“Sir Paul of all that ever bare that name” [f. 21]), an anagram poem the first letters of each line of which spell out the addressee’s name. The

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antiquary Marmaduke Rawden’s anthology (BL MS Add. 18044) acknowledges in the text the printed sources from which poems were copied. Bod. MS Douce 280 has texts from Spenser’s Mother Hubberd’s Tale, The Tears of the Muses, and The Visions of Petrarch, as well as songs from printed books.111

Poems Popular in the Manuscript System If, in the light of our familiarity with canonical texts, we look at the poems that were copied repeatedly in manuscript collections, we discover some expected and some unexpected things.112 We know, judging from the extraordinary number of manuscripts containing verse (some 250), that John Donne’s poems were in great demand in the manuscript system of literary transmission, particularly some of his love elegies and lyrics. There are poems by other canonical poets that, not surprisingly, recur often: for example, Ralegh’s “What is our life,” “Even such is time,” and “The Lie”; Sir John Harington’s “A virtuous lady sitting in a muse”; Jonson’s “The Hour-Glass” and two of his Venetia Digby poems, “The Body” and “The Mind”; Carew’s “Ask me no more whither do stray,” “A fly that flew into his mistress’ eye” (“When this fly liv’d, she us’d to play”) and “The Rapture”; King’s “The Exequy”; and Herrick’s “Curse” (“Go perjur’d man”), “Welcome to Sack” and “Farewell to Sack.” What is, perhaps, surprising is the popularity of poems that, largely because of the low visibility of most of them in print, have not been well-known beyond their own time: for example, Walton Poole’s “If shadows be a picture’s excellence”; William Browne of Tavistock’s epitaphs on the Countess of Pembroke (“Underneath this sable hearse”) and Anne Prideaux (“Nature in this small volume was about”), and the lyric “On one drowned in the snow” (“Within a fleece of silent waters drown’d”); Sir Henry Wotton’s “The character of a happy life” (“How happy is he born or taught”) and “O faithless world”; William Strode’s “On a blistered lip” (“Chide not thy sprowting lippe, nor kill”), “On a butcher marrying a tanner’s daughter” (“A fitter match hath never been”), “On a Gentlewoman walking in the snow” (“I saw fair Cloris walk alone”), and “My love and I for kisses played”; and such anonymous poems as “I’ll tell you how the rose did first grow red” and “Farewell ye gilded follies.” Some of the popular pieces were popular because they were disseminated widely at the university, especially at Christ Church, Oxford; others, because they were examples of wit similar to the pieces gathered in such mid-century miscellanies as (the much-reprinted and constantly expanding) Wits Recreations (1640), The Harmony of the Muses (1654), Sportive Wit (1656), and Parnassus Biceps (1656) and attracted the attention of educated, socially fashionable young men; and still others because they dealt with socially or politically prominent individuals.

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Some of these poems, because they were tied to their immediate contexts or were not part, finally, of notable printed editions of particular canonical poets’s work, dropped out of sight. What is clear from the list of poems that were popular in manuscript transmission is that some poets who loomed large in print were not disseminated in manuscript and vice-versa. Some early modern English poets, such as Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Ralegh, Dyer, Greville, Harington, Gorges, Southwell, Donne, Carew, Corbett, Strode, Randolph and Traherne functioned almost exclusively in the system of manuscript transmission during their lifetimes and their poetry was either put into print without their permission or published posthumously. Other poets, such as Gascoigne, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Jonson, Herrick, Shirley, and King used the manuscript system of transmission, but also allowed their work printed or, as in the cases especially of Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, and Jonson, they made a determined effort to publicize their names through print. Literary histories, which have been based largely on the products of print culture, have given less attention to manuscriptsystem poets such as Dyer, Gorges, Greville, and Strode (especially the last of these) and they have ignored most of the anonymous verse found in the manuscript medium.

Conclusion Manuscripts of poetry, first, highlight the connections of literary texts to their original and subsequent social and political contexts: lyrics by Sir Walter Ralegh, for example, could register one set of social and political attitudes in their original circumstances of composition, but also take on new significance in later historical contexts. Whereas printed collections, from the time of Tottel, tended to remove texts from their occasional contexts and lift them into a developing sphere of the literary, manuscript anthologies often preserved the topical force of individual pieces, putting them to use in new sociopolitical circumstances.113 Second, manuscript collections enact a different conception of textuality. Instead of maintaining an author-centered attitude, they present texts as changeable and changing, subject to the co-creative literary agency of the compilers and transmitters. Some authors’ works have a particularly interesting history in the manuscript system—Ralegh’s and Donne’s, for example. Michael Rudick’s edition of the former, which he terms “An Historical Edition,” presents the author as a changing sign within a materially grounded literary history rather than as a biographical entity whose texts need to be purged of (alleged) corruptions and misattributions, then reconstructed in an idealistic way. This sociocentric approach is encouraged by the manuscript evidence. By contrast, authors not strongly represented in the manuscript anthologies of

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the period, such as Herbert and Milton, have a different relation to socioliterary history. Third, manuscript anthologies force us to pay attention to texts outside the familiar literary canon, especially to a large body of unidentified, rare, or unique poems—including verse written by the compilers themselves. Many of the pieces in the surviving manuscript collections are at least rare, if not unique. Some are skillful, some clumsy, but all are culturally symptomatic. Fourth, the combination of elements in personal anthologies is often idiosyncratic and a product not only of the developing interests of compilers but also of happenstance (such as the acquisition from a particular source of a group of poems for transcription). The resulting collection may be quite heterogenous, typically not arranged in a particular generic or other order. Fifth, manuscript anthologies often present individual authors within the social and literary networks in which they were enmeshed rather than in isolation from them. And so, if, for example, we compare the different ways we encounter their work within manuscript anthologies with its presentation in single-author editions, the traces of the social and political contexts are more visible in the former as are the literary “conversations” in which they were engaged with their contemporaries. Sixth, the personal anthologies are important evidence for scholars to use in constructing narratives of changing aesthetic and literary tastes in the early modern period—a story worth telling, but one which should be based not simply on printed editions (from the period or from later times). Aesthetic judgment and connoisseurship were exercised to some degree in the construction of some of the personal anthologies of the period, and, although they were not the only or the consistent standards used to determine inclusion of particular pieces, it is fair to say that the artfulness and skill perceived in some poems account for their presence in the collections. Just as keepers of commonplace books made judgments about what ideas and authoritative statements were worth recording (and internalizing as part of their intellectual equipment), so too compliers of poetical anthologies, in a period in which the modern institution of literature was taking shape largely through the impact of print culture, transcribed poems whose artful expression made them worth preserving. To some extent, then, the compilers were literary critics. There are, of course, many other reasons for examining these manuscript documents, including the important one having to do with the need to rewrite literary history to make it less dependent on print culture and more representative of the full system of textual circulation and transmission in all media—voice, manuscript, and print.

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Notes 1 Hyder Edward Rollins (ed.), Tottel’s Miscellany (1557–1587), rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), 2. 2 J. W. Saunders, “The Stigma of Print: A Note on the Social bases of Tudor Poetry,” Essays in Criticism 1 (1951): 139–64. 3 In response to the misuse of Saunders’ concept of a widely-conceived “stigma of print,” Steven W. May has offered a valuable critique in “The Stigma of Print Revisited,” in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts VI, Papers of the Renaissance English Text Society 2011–2016, ed. Arthur F. Marotti (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies in conjunction with Renaissance English Text Society, 2019), 1–10. 4 Henry Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts 1558–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 157, states that there are about 230 verse miscellanies surviving for the period before 1640, twentyseven of which were compiled before 1600. See my earlier study of manuscript and print transmission of lyric poetry, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), esp. 1–208. 5 Some manuscripts collected or bound later, such as those in the Conway papers (BL MS Add. 23229), the first thirteen folios of Edward Bannister’s collection (BL MS Add. 28253), Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.53, a collection of loose verse manuscripts found in the papers of Sir John Coke (BL MS Add. 69968A), and some of the sheets in Peter Le Neve’s manuscript (BL MS Add. 27407) were folded loose sheets such as those used in correspondence. For a rich study of the Conway Papers, see Daniel Starza Smith, John Donne and the Conway Papers: Patronage and Manuscript Circulation in the Early Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 6 A quaternion is, according to the OED, “[a] quire of four sheets of paper or parchment folded in two. Formerly also: a sheet of paper or parchment folded twice.” In the famous case of Ben Jonson’s poetic sequence for Venetia Digby, in the second folio of the poet’s works Jonson’s editor, Sir Kenelm Digby, explains that “a whole quaternion in the midst of this Poem is lost, containing entirely the three next pieces of it, and all of the fourth (which in order of the whole, is the eighth.) excepting the very end…” (The Workes of Benjamin Jonson, The Second Volume [London, 1640], 258). 7 G. S. Ivy, “The Bibliography of the Manuscript Book,” in Francis Wormald and C. E. Wright (eds.), The English Library Before 1700: Studies in Its History (London: The Althone Press, 1958), 40, states that “In manuscript times, the quire was the basic unit of the book. Most books were probably written by their authors in quires… Miscellaneous manuscripts were compiled by the quire.” 8 See J. W. Saunders, “From Mansucript to Print: A Note on the Circulation of Poetic MSS in the Sixteenth Century,” Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society 6, no. 8 (1951): 508–28 and Harold Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 9 Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 13, defines the “separate” as “an individually circulated short manuscript which was written as a unit, and not assembled from elements copied at varying times and places (which would be an ‘aggregation’).”

28

Introduction

10 See Michael Rudick (ed.), The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh: A Historical Edition (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies for the Renaissance English Text Society,1999), 16–17, 11 See Peter Beal’s comments in his Index of English Literary Manuscripts, vol. 1, pts. 1 and 2, and vol. 2, pts. 1 and 2 (London and New York: Mansell Publishing, 1980–93), 1.1.12. This Index has been expanded and revised as the online CELM. The reference in CELM is https://celmms.org.uk/ introductions/HaringtonSirJohn.html (accessed 20 March 2020). 12 See Steven W. May, The Elizabethan Courtier Poets: The Poems and their Contexts (Columbia, MO: University Missouri Press, 1991), 318–19. 13 See the commentary on this in The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne: The Verse Letters, ed. Jeffrey S. Johnson et al. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2019), 1174–80. 14 Woudhuysen, 147. 15 “John Finet’s Miscellany” (PhD diss, Washington University, 1960), 40. 16 Woudhuysen, 50. 17 Arthur F. Marotti, John Donne, Coterie Poet (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), ix–x. See also Beal, Index 1.1.245. 18 See Ruth Hughey (ed.), The Arundel Harington Manuscript of Tudor Poetry, 2 vols. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1960), 1.179. 19 J. B. Leishman, “‘You Meaner Beauties of the Night,’ A Study in Transmission and Transmogrification,” The Library, 4th ser. 26 (1945): 99–121. See also Peter Redford (ed.), The Burley Manuscript (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2017), 35–60, for a discussion of memorial transcription. 20 See Wiliam Nelson, “From ‘Listen Lordings’ to ‘Dear Reader,’” University of Toronto Quarterly 46 (1976/7): 7, and Roger Chartier, “Leisure and Sociability: Reading Aloud in Modern Europe,” trans. Carol Mossman, in Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. E. Weissman (eds.), Urban Life in the Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), 103–20. 21 Love, Scribal Publication, 141–48. 22 See Mary Thomas Crane, Framing Authority: Sayings, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Peter Beal, “Notions in Garrison: The Seventeenth-Century Commonplace Book,” in W. Speed Hill (ed.), New Ways of Looking at Old Texts: Papers of the Renaissance English Text Society, 1985–1991 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies and the Renaissance English Text Society 1993), 131–47. 23 Marotti, Manuscript, 21; Edward Doughtie, “John Ramsey’s Manuscript as a Personal and Family Document,” in Hill (ed.), New Ways, 281–88. See also Angus Vine, Miscellaneous Order: Manuscript Culture and the Early Modern Organization of Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 77–79. 24 See Steven W. May and Arthur F. Marotti, Ink, Stink Bait, Revenge and Queen Elizabeth; A Yorkshire Yeoman’s Household Book (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2014). 25 See Lady Margaret Douglas et al., The Devonshire Manuscript: A Woman’s Book of Courtly Poetry, ed. Elizabeth Heale, (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2012). 26 Woudhuysen, 103. 27 In Praise of Scribes: Manuscripts and their Makers in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 58–108.

Introduction

29

28 See C. M. Armitage, “Donne’s Poems in Huntington Manuscript 198: New light on ‘The Funeral,’” SP 63 (1966): 697–707. 29 For a modern edition of this manuscript, see David Coleman Redding, “Robert Bishop’s Commonplace Book: An Edition of a SeventeenthCentury Miscellany” (PhD Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1960). 30 See the discussion of this manuscript in Jason Powell, “Thomas Wyatt’s Poetry in Embassy: Egerton 2711 and the Production of Manuscripts Abroad,” HLQ 67.2 (2004): 261–82. Woudhuysen, 104, relates this manuscript to the practice of having a scribe “make fair copies of poems which could then be revised, corrected, and even added to.” He states “Wyatt himself … copied further poems, to which other hands contributed more; at some stage he corrected those poems which the scribes had already written.” 31 Beal, Index, 1.2.167. 32 Beal, Index, 1.2.103. These are papers transcribed for Fulke Greville by his amanuenses. 33 Margaret Crum, “Poetical Manuscripts of Dudley, Third Baron North,” Bodleian Library Record 10 (1979): 98–108. 34 Woudhuysen, 155, states: “Of the seventy-three or so principal manuscript miscellanies containing poems by Donne which Beal described, thirty-one are entirely, or almost entirely, given over to his poems.” 35 Woudhuysen, 105. 36 See Hughey’s edition. Another large sixteenth-century collection is “Bannatyne Manuscript” (National Library of Scotland MS Adv. 1.1.6), which has 435 poems. 37 See Arthur F. Marotti, “Humphrey Coningsby and the Personal Anthologizing of Verse in Elizabethan England,” in Michael Denbo (ed.), New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, IV: Papers of the Renaissance English Text Society 2002–2006 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Renaissance English Text Society, 2008), 71–102; Woudhuysen, 278–86, and Jessica Edmondes (ed.) Elizabethan Poetry in Manuscript: An Edition of British Library Harley MS 7392(2) (New York and Toronto: ITER Press, 2021). 38 See Steven W. May (ed.), Henry Stanford’s Anthology: An Edition of Cambridge University Library Manuscript Dd.5.75 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1988). 39 Mary Hobbs, Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts (Aldershot, U.K.: Scolar Press, 1992), 62–67. 40 Hobbs, 67–71. 41 For a discussion of this manuscript, see Chapter 5. 42 See the description of this manuscript in Robert Krueger (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 438–39. 43 See the discussion of this manuscript in Chapter 4. 44 On this manuscript, see Cedric C. Brown, “Recusant Community and Jesuit Mission in Parliament Days: Bod. MS Eng. poet. b.5,” Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003): 290–315. 45 For this manuscript, see May and Marotti, Ink, Stink Bait. 46 See Richard Harrier, The Canon of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Poetry (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 24. 47 See Cummings, 33–45. 48 See the discussion of this manuscript in Chapter 3. 49 For a discussion of the circulation of epitaphs in manuscript, see Claire Bryony Williams, “Manuscript, Monument, Memory: the Circulation of

30

50

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59

60 61 62

63

64

Introduction Epitaphs in the 17th Century,” Literature Compass 11/8 (2014): 573–82, and Joshua Scodel, The English Poetic Epitaph: Commemoration and Conflict from Jonson to Wordsworth (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), esp. 140–62. For example, “Epitaph on Dr Johnson” (“Why should we feare to entertayne” [p. 18]), “An Epitaph on Doctor Johnson Physitian” (“Wert thou but a single death! Or but on corse” [p. 78]), and “On Mr Vaux, who dyed last lent 1626” (“Vaux dead ‘tis strange” [pp. 291–92]). See the following items in Margaret Crum’s First-Line Index of Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, 2 vols. (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1969), A 1362, O 1094, S 984, T 607, T 1445, and T 1481. See Pauline Croft, “The Reputation of Robert Cecil: Libels, Political Opinion and Popular Awareness in the Early Seventeenth Century,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 1 (1991): 43–69. “To his Mistress Going to Bed,” “Love’s War,” and “Love’s Progress” were excluded. Seee Marotti, Manuscript, 76–82 and Ian Moulton, Before Pornography; Erotic Writing in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 35–69. Moulton, 48–49, discusses this poem. See the text of this poem on pp. 84–89 below. See Bette Talvacchia, Taking Positions: On the Erotic in Renaissance Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). The illustrations by Marcantonio Raimondi are after those of Giulio Romano. Thomas Cogswell, “Underground Verse and the Transformation of Early Stuart Political Culture,” in Susan D. Amussen and Mark A. Kishlansky (eds.), Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to David Underdown (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1995), 277–300, makes this point with reference to early Stuart state satire. See Steven W. May and William A. Ringler, Jr., comp., Elizabethan Poetry: A Bibliography and First-Line Index of English Verse, 1559–1603, 3 vols. (London and New York: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004), EV 2283 and EV 9510, for the Oxford libel (“And think you I have not a load”) and the Cambridge libel (“I am a post in haste with speed”). See Steven W. May, “‘The French Primero’: A Study of Renaissance Textual Transmission and Taste,” English Language Notes 9 (1971): 102–8. For a collection of Elizabethan libels and a study of the form, see Steven W. May and Alan Bryson, Verse Libel in Renaissance England and Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). On the latter, see Andrew McRae, Literature and the Early Stuart State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 46–80 passim and 120–43 passim) and Marotti, Manuscript, 107–10. Poems on both figures are reproduced in ESL. See also Harold Love and Arthur F. Marotti, “Manuscript Transmission and Circulation,” in David Loewenstein and Janel Mueller (eds.), The Cambridge History of Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 74–80 and, for later satiric and political verse, Harold Love, English Clandestine Satire 1660–1702 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). See McRae, 144–45.

Introduction

31

65 This work, which appears in at least fifteen manuscripts, was finally put into print in 1642 as The Commons Petition of Long Afflicted England. 66 See David Colclough, “‘The Muses Recreation’: John Hoskyns and the Manuscript Culture of the Seventeenth Century,” HLQ 61, 3/4 (1998): 369–400. The surviving body of work by this poet is quite limited. 67 The text of this poem is reproduced in Appendix 2 of Chapter 3. 68 For a recent study of the early modern English epigram, see James Doelman, The Epigram in England, 1590–1640 (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2016). See also Joel Swann, “Copying Epigrams in Manuscript Miscellanies,” in Joshua Eckhardt and Daniel Starza Smith (eds.), Manuscrpt Miscellanies in Early Modern England (Farnham, U.K. and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 151–68. 69 See Margaret J. M. Ezell, Writing Women’s Literary History (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) and “The Laughing Tortoise: Speculations on Manuscript Sources and Women’s Book History,” ELR 38.2 (2008): 331–55. See also the collection of essays edited by Jill Millman and Gillian Wright, Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Poetry (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2005). 70 The manuscript catalog, developed through this multi-year project by Elizabeth Clarke, Victoria Burke, Jonathan Gibson and others, is available online, accompanied by digitized copies of manuscripts, through Adam Matthew Publications: http://www.adam-matthew-publications.co.uk/ collections_az/Perdita/highlights.aspx. 71 See the discussion of this manuscript in Chapter 2. 72 See Victoria Burke, “Contexts for Women’s Manuscript Miscellanies: The Case of Elizabeth Lyttleton and Sir Thomas Browne,” Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003): 316–28. 73 See Jean Klene, C.S.C. (ed.), The Southwell-Sibthorpe Commonplace Book (Tempe, AZ: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies and the Renaissance English Text Society, 1997). See also the discussion of this manuscript in Gillian Wright, Producing Women’s Poetry, 1600–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 27–56. 74 See Deborah Aldrich-Watson (ed.), The Verse Miscellany of Constance Aston Fowler: A Diplomatic Edition (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies and The Renaissance English Text Society, 2000). 75 See the discussion of this manuscript and the Douglas-Howard liaison in Heale. 76 “Reading Friends: Women’s Participation in ‘Masculine’ Literary Culture,” in Victoria E. Burke and Jonathan Gibson (eds.), Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Writing: Selected Papers from the Trinity/Trent Colloquium (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate Publishing, 2004), 75–90, at 79–80. 77 See Chapter 2. 78 See Beal, Index, 2.1.269. 79 This poem is reproduced in Marotti, Manuscript, 53–54. 80 Poems such as “The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,” “I grieve and dare not show my discontent” and “When I was fair and young then favour graced me,” the last a dubious ascription, appear in several manuscripts (see Steven W. May [ed.], Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works [New York: Washington Square Press, 2004], 7–9, 12–13, 26–27). 81 Lady Dorothy is found in the ODNB under the surname of her second husband, William Stafford https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/13948 (accessed 3 March 2020). She was born in 1600, the youngest of the second

32

82 83 84

85 86 87

88

89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

Introduction earl of Essex’s children, married Sir Henry Shirley in 1615, and, after his death in 1633, married William Stafford in 1635, and died in 1636. She was close to the Catholic Tixall circle, a friend in particular of Constance Aston Fowler, in whose manuscript collection, Hunt. MS HM 904, this poem appears: for this, see Aldrich-Watson, 105. Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson (eds.), Early Modern Women Poets: An Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 261–62, print another of her poems (from Fowler’s manuscript collection), “Deare Cosen pardon me, if I mistowke.” Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50, f. 81; Hunt. MS 904, f. 136r-v; and BL MS Sloane 1446, f. 49v. For a text of this poem see Marotti, Manuscript, 152–58. The six lines beginning “Helpe Mistress Helpe, the flames of my desire” also appear in Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c. 50, fol. 117v, as a separate poem. Interestingly, two poems later, we find a transcription of the first two stanzas of Donne’s “Loves Diet” (untitled), followed, on f. 118, by Ben Jonson’s “My Picture Left in Scotland” (untitled). The anonymous six-line poem is also found in Folger MSS V.a.96, f. 51 and V.a.322, p. 127 and Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50, f. 117v (ending “For nothing else will put it out I know”). See Beal, Index, 1.2.140. Marotti, Manuscript, 145. See Baird Whitlock, John Hoskyns, Serjeant-at-Law (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982), 283–93 and Michelle O’Callaghan, “Performing Politics: The Circulation of the ‘Parliament Fart’” HLQ 69.1 (1998): 81–96. See the text of this poem in Chapter 7, pp. 000–000. This poem also appears in the Holgate MS (Pierpont Morgan Library MS MA 1058, p. 140), which also has Sonnet 106 (on p. 96). See my discussion of this conflated poem in “Shakespeare’s Sonnets as Literary Property,” in Elizabeth D. Harvey and Katherine Eisaman Maus (eds.), Soliciting Interpretation: Literary Theory and Seventeenth-Century Poetry (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 148–49, and in “Shakespeare’s Sonnets and the Manuscript Circulation of Texts in Early Modern England,” in Michael Schoenfeldt (ed.), A Companion to Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 197–98. See Marotti, “Shakespeare’s Sonnets,” 163–65. The text of this poem is found in Chapter 10, p. 345. Marotti, Manuscript, 189–94. This piece is also found in BL MSS Add. 19268, f. 14 and Sloane 1792, f. 92; Bod. MS Eng. Poet. f.25, f. 64v; Westminster Abbey MS 41, f. 89; and Yale Osb. MS b 205, f. 73. See E. F. Hart, “The Answer-Poem of the Early Seventeenth Century,” RES n.s. 7 (1956): 19–29 and Marotti, Manuscript, 159–71. See Chapter 2. May, Elizabethan Courtier Poets, 245–46. The Folger Index copies of this poem in Yale Osb. MS b.205, f. 48 and BL MS Add. 15227, f. 16. It is also found in the Derbyshire Record Office MS D258/34/26/1, f. 36v. May, Elizabethan Courtier Poets, 318–19. May, Elizabethan Courtier Poets, 339–40. Rudick, xlii–lxvii, 30–45. See Corbett’s “Tell mee, you Anti-Saintes, why glasse,” Strode’s “I know no paint of poetry,” and Terrent’s “I hope at this time ‘tis no news.”

Introduction

33

100 See Margaret Crum (ed.), The Poems of Henry King (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 226–27. 101 All three poems are found in Folger MS V.a.170, pp. 184–92, followed by Thomas Randolph’s and William Strode’s separate Latin translations of Jonson’s poem, pp. 192–97. 102 See http://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?fn= search&ct=search&initialSearch=true&mode=Basic&tab=local&indx=1& dum=true&srt=rank&vid=IAMS_VU2&frbg=&vl%28freeText0%29= Additional+MS+47111&scp.scps=scope%3A%28BL%29 (accessed 3 March 2020). 103 See Marotti, Manuscript, 176–81. 104 See Edward Doughtie (ed.), Liber Lilliati: Elizabethan Verse and Song (Bodleian MS Rawlinson Poetry 148 (Newark: University of Delaware Press and London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1985), 110–12, 114–15. 105 May’s edition of Dd.5.75 and Marotti, Manuscript, 187–88. 106 See Marotti, Manuscript, 204–6. 107 For a discussion of the Skipwith manuscript, see Chapter 4. 108 “Discoveries Concerning British Library MS Harley 6910,” Modern Philology 77 (1979–80): 121–31. 109 William Ringler, “Bishop Percy’s Quarto Manuscript (BL MS Add. 34064) and Nicholas Breton,” Philological Quarterly 54 (1984): 26–39. 110 The Spenser selections are on ff. 317-20v under the heading, “Verses taken out of the ruines of tyme”: (in order) The Ruines of Time, ll. 43–56, 83–84. 102–5, 106–19, 134–40, 159–61, 169–75, 183–96, 216–17; Mother Hubbard’s Tale, ll. 713–56, 891–908, 1021–22, 1151–78; The Ruines of Time, ll. 223–38, 239–43, 258–64, 272–3, 302–5, 365–71, 435–59, 673–79, 517–28; The Tears of the Muses, ll. 571–82, 589–94; Mother Hubbard’s Tale, ll. 133–53, 254–58, 431–36, 457–58, 475–67. See Redford’s edition of this manuscript. 111 Marotti, Manuscript, 21. See also Doughtie, “Ramsey’s Manuscript.” 112 See my earlier discussion of poems that were popular in the manuscript system in Manuscript, 126–33. 113 For a discussion of one example of this, see Ted-Larry Pebworth, “‘Dazl’d Thus, with Height of Place’ and the Appropriation of Political Poetry in the Earlier Seventeenth Century,” PBSA 71 (1977): 151–69.

Part I

Single Manuscripts in Their Social Environments

2

Courtly and Satellite Courtly Culture: Folger MS V.a.89

Poems were circulated and collected during the Tudor and early Stuart periods at the royal court and in satellite courtly environments such as the houses of the social or aristocratic elite. One manuscript belonging to this environment is Folger MS V.a.89 (the Cornwallis-Lysons MS). It is a relatively short Elizabethan poetical anthology once owned by Anne Cornwallis, who signed her name on the second page of the manuscript (“Anne Cornwaleys/her booke”) no later than 1610 when she became Duchess of Argyll.1 As William Bond has noted in his discussion of its physical features and provenance, this manuscript is in a late eighteenthcentury binding with its original, somewhat damaged, pages interleaved with blank sheets. It contains two separate sections of verse transcribed in two different hands, suggesting, to Bond, that “the book had been used for two different purposes at different times and by different people”2—though, of course, in the light of Anne Cornwallis’s assertion of ownership of the whole, they can be considered as a single unit. The first section is an apparently unique collection of seven poems by someone named John Bentley, perhaps in the author’s own hand;3 the second is a larger, twenty-seven-poem, collection of mostly amorous verse in the hand of a professional scribe, containing poems ascribed or misascribed to Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Anne Vavasour, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sir Edward Dyer, as well as unascribed poems by Sir Walter Ralegh, Richard Edwards, Sir William Cordell, and other authors.4 Seven of the twenty-seven anonymous poems in this second section of the manuscript are apparently unique copies.5 Used by textual editors for editions of the poetry of Sidney, Dyer, Ralegh, and Oxford,6 this manuscript has also attracted the attention of Shakespeare scholars because one of its anonymous poems has been attributed to him, “when that thyne eye hathe chose the dame” (pp. 25–26), a piece that appears in other manuscripts as well as in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599 and 1612). Although we do not know whether the two-part collection, the second part of which was probably assembled in the 1590s,7 was originally transcribed for Anne Cornwallis herself, her ownership or appropriation of it not only signals women’s involvement in the manuscript system of literary

38

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transmission but also suggests connections between her interests and her family’s social environment with the authors and subject matter of the poems it contains.8 Since one of her ancestors was John Vere, eleventh Earl of Oxford, she and her family might have had an especial interest in poems written by or connected with the current Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, several of whose poems appear in the collection.9 Sir William Cornwallis, a man involved in both Elizabethan and Jacobean courtly society, hosted visits by Queen Elizabeth on several occasions and, as H. R. Woudhuysen has noted, had East Anglian connections with the Sidneys.10 He also entertained or patronized such musicians and poets as Thomas Watson, Thomas Churchyard, John Willbye, Fulke Greville, and Ben Jonson. Clearly verse was welcome in this familial environment. Folger MS V.a.89 is important for both textual and cultural reasons. As a manuscript collection of verse associated with an early modern Englishwoman, it reflects an artistocratic woman’s interests in fashionable mid-Elizabethan amorous verse. It demonstrates the sociocultural currency of amorous lyricism in the Elizabethan period as a means of expressing desire and its frustrations in a competitive court-centered environment.11 But it also points to the usefulness of the system of manuscript transmission as a medium for the work of aristocratic and genteel poets such as Oxford, Sidney, Dyer, and Ralegh. The twentyseven-poem anthology in the second part of the manuscript shares twelve lyrics with manuscript collections associated with Humphrey Coningsby (BL MS Harley 7392)12 and John Finet (Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 85),13 and a thirteenth poem with the former but not the latter.14 The high degree of overlap of the contents of Folger MS V.a.89 with the Harley and Rawlinson Poetry manuscripts indicates its closeness to the courtly and aristocratic milieux from which those anthologies drew many of their poems. Poems by Oxford, Dyer, and Sidney appear in all three documents, but, more to the point, these manuscripts all speak a common courtly idiom whose literary and social coordinates were understood by both poets and compilers. H. R. Woudhuysen traces the movement of the Harley manuscript from Oxford to the Inns of Court.15 Other manuscripts, such as Marsh Library, Dublin MS Z3.5.21, and Bod.MS Rawl. Poet. 85, were assembled by undergraduates at St. John’s College, Cambridge, who got access to circulating courtly verse.16 Laurence Cummings shows how Rawl. Poet. 85 was assembled at both the Court and at Cambridge. Both of these collections have their gaze turned to the Court and its literary fashions as well as to the aristocratic and courtly circles in which the verse of socially elite poets such as Oxford, Sidney, and Dyer was transmitted in manuscript.17 By contrast with the other two, however, Anne Cornwallis’s anthology seems more retrospective than contemporary, recording much old-fashioned verse written in the 1570s and early 1580s, rather than showing interest in the new poetic styles and forms appearing in the 1590s.18

Courtly and Satellite Courtly Culture

39

As a socially active, but distant, relative of the Earl of Oxford, Anne Cornwallis probably had an especial interest in the affair between the Earl and Anne Vavasour, the Elizabethan Gentlewoman of the Bedchamber by whom he scandalously had a child in 1581:19 the love poems related to it (“Thoughe I seeme straunge sweete frynd be thow not soe” [pp. 8–9]; “Sittinge alone upon my thought in melancholye moode” [p. 13]), both ascribed to “Vavaser,” are a prominent feature of the collection. The first poem in this section of the manuscript is Oxford’s “weare I a kinge I mighte commande contente,” here joined to the antiOxford answer-poem as though the two pieces were separate stanzas of a single work, with “Vere finis” following the second: weare I a kinge I mighte commaunde contente weare I obscure? unknowne should be my cares And weare I deade? noe thoughtes could me torment nor woordes nor wronges nor love nor hates nor feares A doubtefull choyse for me three thinges of me to crave A kingdome or a cottage or a grave20 Wearte thou a kinge? yet not commaund contente wher empire none thy mynd could yet suffice were thow obscure? still cares would the tormente but wearte thow dead all care & sorrrowe dyes An easye ^choise^ of three thinges the to crave noe kingdome nor a cottage, but a grave. (p. 7) The lyric that answers Oxford’s is a status-conscious poetic assault on the Earl’s social snobbery and sense of entitlement—attributed, significantly, in one manuscript, to Sir Philip Sidney, whose tennis-court confrontation with the Earl led to Sidney’s rebuke by the Queen and had high visibility in courtly society.21 After a transcription of the first stanza of Richard Edwards’s poem from The Paradise of Dainty Devices (“The saylinge shippe with Joy, at lengthe doth touche their longe desired porte” [p. 7]), the next poem in the sequence is one possibly written by Oxford’s former mistress, Anne Vavasour, to Sir Henry Lee around 1590 (“Thoughe I seeme strange sweete frynd be thow not soe” [pp. 8–9]).22 By 1590, the Earl had long lived with the consequences of his affair with Vavasour, and was a disgraced courtier, who, though he retained a certain ceremonial presence at Court by virtue of his status as the holder of the second oldest earldom,23 was unable to secure either substantial political power or a major position of trust from the Queen. Thus, both the answer-poem to Oxford’s “weare I a kinge I mighte commaunde contente” and this poem suggest (beyond a general interest in the Earl’s doings) an anti-Oxford bias.24 Three poems later, it is followed by a lyric (“When I was faire and

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yonge then favoure graced me” [p. 12]), which is attributed by some scholars to Queen Elizabeth herself, but one that may be a ventriloquizing of the Queen’s voice in order to make her express regret for not accepting (courtly or marital) importunate suitors in her youth.25 Here the piece is attributed to the “l[ord] of oxforde,” whose own disappointments at Court might have accounted for either his authorship of or his being associated with such a poem. The piece expresses the point of view of frustrated suitors, whose voices are figured in the many other poems in the anthology that express aspiration, desire, and need. For example, Dyer’s lyric, “I would it were not as it is” (pp. 9–10), which is the next poem in the sequence after Vavasour’s “Thoughe I seeme strange,” speaks a courtly language of desire and frustration that ambiguously relates both to love and ambition.26 The “good happe” that the desiring speaker wishes is easily understood as dangerous political aspiration: “they ryse to fall that clyme to hye.” Ralegh’s “farewell false love thow oracle of lyes” (pp. 10–11) is a palinode that, with heavyhanded moralism, rejects romantic love as deceitful, dangerous, and destructive, a poem that evokes some of the bitterness felt by courtly suitors. Given the social connections of the Cornwallis family to the Sidneys, Woudhuysen states that “it is not hard to imagine that Anne Cornwallis might have got hold of the privileged texts of [Sir Philip Sidney’s] poems.”27 Thus, the Sidney and Dyer lyrics that were part of a poetic competition included later in both Englands Helicon and in the edition of Certaine sonnets printed in the 1598 Folio edition of Sidney’s works (“Prometheus when firste from heaven hye” [p. 21] and “A satyre once did runne awaye for dread” [p. 23]) appear in the collection correctly ascribed “Dier” and “S[ir] p[hilip] Sydney.” Three other Dyer poems (“As rare to heare as seldome to be seene” [p. 17], “I woulde it were not as it is” [p. 9], and “wher one woulde be ther not to be” [p. 22]) are also recorded and ascribed to this member of Sidney’s literary coterie.28 The verse in Folger MS V.a.89,29 then, captures a mid-Elizabethan style of amorous lyricism attractive to an aristocratic and courtly readership. These (mostly plaintive) love poems speak a culture-specific language of desire, intrigue, and frustration endemic to the Elizabethan court. The two Ralegh poems, for example, the one a plaintive act of amorous/political suitorship (“Caulinge to mynde myne eye went longe aboute” [p. 19]), the other a morally charged palinode (“farewell false love thow oracle of lyes” [pp. 10–11]), both unascribed, are good examples of this idiom. In another mode, the final poem in the anthology, the much-transcribed “The French Primero,” is a political lyric about a foreign dynastic and religious conflict of great interest to the politically active class in England.30 The textual interest of Folger MS V.a.89 rests on three of its features: first, the seven Bentley poems for which this manuscript provides the

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only known surviving texts; second, the poem attributed to Shakespeare, which probably accounts for this manuscript’s being acquired by James Halliwell-Phillips in the late nineteenth century; and third, the seven other poems that are found here in apparently unique copies. Since William Bond has already published transcriptions of the (partially damaged) Bentley pieces,31 I wish to concentrate on the second and third of these components.

The Poem Ascribed to Shakespeare Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, who edited the printed version of “when that thine eye hath chose the dame” for the Oxford Shakespeare, claim that the manuscript texts of this poem found in Folger MSS V.a.89 and V.a.339 “represent an alternative textual tradition to that behind the version printed in The Passionate Pilgrim, and the differences between these two versions of the poem show every sign of authorial variation.”32 In the textual companion to their edition, they present as an alternate text to the printed one a version that is found in Folger MS V.a.339, a Caroline manuscript, with variants from the version found in Folger MS V.a.89. F. T. Prince, in the Arden edition of Shakespeare’s Poems, edited the printed version of the poem collated with the same two manuscripts, as did Colin Burrow in his edition of Shakespeare’s poems.33 Katherine Duncan-Jones and H. R. Woudhuysen, however, include the version found in BL MS Harley 7392 in their textual collations.34 I offer here a version of the poem using as copy-text Folger MS V.a.89 together with the textual variants found in BL MS Harley 7392 [H], Folger MS V.a.339 [F], and The Passionate Pilgrim [1599 and 1612] [PP1&3]):

when that thyne eye hathe chose the dame & staulde the deare that thow wouldest strike lett reason rule thinges worthy blame as well as fancye parcyall like take counsell of some other heade nether unwise nor yet unwayde And when thou commest thy tale to tell whett not thy tonge with fyled talke leaste she some subtill practyse smell a cripple sone can fynde one haulte but playnlye saye thou lovest her well and sett thy person forthe to sell.

[5]

[10]

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Single Manuscripts And to her will frame all thy wayes spare not to spend & cheiflye there wher thy expences may sounde thy prayse by ringinge allwayes in her eare the strongest castell tower or towne the golden bullett hathe beat downe Serve allwayes with assured truste & in thy suyte be humble trewe unlesse thy ladye prove unjuste seeke never thow to change anewe when tyme dothe serve then be not slacke to proffer thoughe she putt it backe what thoughe her frowninge browes be bent her cloudye lookes will cleare ere nighte And she perhappes will sone repent that she dissembled her delighte and twice desire ere it be daye that with suche scorne she put awaye what thoughe she strive to trye her strengthe & chide & brawle & saye the naye her feble force will yelde at lengthe & crafte hathe taught her thus to saye had woemen bene as stronge as men in faythe yow had not got it then Thinke woemen love to matche with men and not to live soe like a sainte here is no heaven; they holye then beginne when age dothe them attaynte were kyssinge all the Joyes in bedde one woman wold another wedde The wyles and guyles that in them lurke dissembled with an outwarde showe the trickes & toyes & meanes to woorke the cocke that treades them shall not knowe have yow not heard that sayde full ofte a womans naye dothe stand for noughte Nowe hoe inoughe too muche I feare for if my ladye heare this songe she will not sticke to ringe my eare

[15]

[20]

[25]

[30]

[35]

[40]

[45]

[50]

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to teache my tounge to be soe longe Yet would she blushe here be it saide to heare her secretes thus bewrayede./ finis (pp. 25–26) 1 When that] When as PP1&3 2 wouldest] shalt H; shouldst PP1&3 4 fancy parcyall like] partiall fancie like F2; fancy (partyall might) PP1; fancy (party all might) PP3 5 take] aske F2; other] wiser PP1&3 6 unwise] too young PP1&3; unwayde] unwed F2, H, PP1&3 8 whett] Smooth PP1&3 10 fynde] spie F2; one] a F2, PP1&3; on H 12 thy] her PP1&3; person] body F2; sell] sale PP1&3 13-24 follow 25-36 in PP1&3 13 And to] unto F2 15 expences] expence F2; desart PP1&3; sound thy] sound H; merit PP1&3 16 by ringinge allwayes in her eare] & still be ringinge in her eare F2; by ringing in thy Ladies eare PP1&3 17 castell tower or towne] towers fort or towne F2; castle, tower and towne PP1&3 18 hathe beat] beateth F2; beats it PP1&3 20 humble] ever F2 21 unlesse] untill F2 22 seeke] presse F2, H, PP1&3; change] chuse H, PP1&3; anewe] for newe F2 23 doth] shal PP1; shall PP3; then be] be thou PP1&3 24 it] thee PP1 25 thoughe her frowninge browes] if shee frowne with sorowes F2 26 cleare] calme F2, H; ere] at F2; yer PP1&3 27 And she perhappes will sone] when that perhaps shee will F2; And then too late she wil PP1&3 28 she] so F2; her] for H 29 ere] yer PP1&3 30 with such] which with PP1&3 31 thoughe] if F2 32 chide] ban F2, H, PP1&3; saye] swere F2 34 &] When PP1&3; hathe taught] will cause F2 35 as] so PP1&3 36 in faythe yow] by cock you F2; By the Masse he H 37-42 in PP1&3 follow 43-48 37 love] seeke F2, H; still PP1&3; matche] strive PP1&3 38 and not to live soe like a sainte] to live in sinne & not to saint F2;

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And lyve in synne and not to Saynte H; To sinne and never for to saint PP1&3 39 Here] There PP1&3; they] be F2, H; by PP1&3 40 beginne when age dothe them] till time shall thee with age F2; When time with Age shall them H, PP1&3 41 kyssinge] kisses PP1&3 43 The wyles and guyles that in them lurke] A thousand wiles in wantons lurkes F2; The wiles and Gibes that in them lurke H; The wiles and guiles that women worke PP1&335 45 & meanes to woorke] the meane to worke F2; the meanes to wurke H; that in them lurke PP1&3 46 shall] doth F2 47 have] hast F2; that] it F2, H, PP1&3. 49 Now hoe] ho now F2; Now whoe H; But soft PP1&3; too muche] & more F2 50 ladye heare] mistress hard F2; this] my PP1&3 51 will] would F2;36 ringe] warme F2; wring H; rounde PP1&3; my] mine H; me on the PP1&3; eare] are PP137 53 would] will PP1&3; blushe] smile F2 54 thus] so PP1&3 It is difficult to understand why Wells and Taylor print the Folger MS V.a.339 version as textually superior to that found in Folger MS V.a.89 (or BL MS Harley 7392). The unmetrical line 25 of the text found in Folger MS V.a.339 is clearly wrong and readings in lines 5, 10, 13, 15, 17, 20, 21, 31, 32, 34, 45, 46, 49, and 53 that depart from the other extant texts mark this version as the most corrupt manuscript one (even if there were two different versions of the poem in circulation, from which the manuscripts and the printed text derived). Apart from the different sequence of stanzas, The Passionate Pilgrim texts appear to have notable errors in lines 4 (“might”), 6 (“too young”), 12 (“her” and “sale”), 39 (“by”), and 51 (“round me on th’are”). Of the manuscript versions, that found in Harley 7392 might be the best textually, but the text in Folger MS V.a.89 is a close second, preserving what might be considered readings superior to those in Folger V.a.339 in lines 12 (“person” instead of “body”), 17 (“castell tower or towne” instead of “towers fort or towne”), 20 (“humble” instead of “ever”), 25 (“thoughe her frowning browes” instead of “if shee frowne with sorowes”), 26 (“ere” instead of “at”), 34 (“hathe taught” instead of “will cause”), 40 (“beginne when age dothe them” instead of “till time shall thee with age”),38 43 (“The wyles and guyles that in them lurke” instead of “A thousand wiles in wantons lurkes”), 49 (“too much” instead of “& more”), 50 (“ladye heare” instead of “mistress hard”), and 53 (“blush” instead of “smile”).39 One of the interesting things about this poem is its cynical, worldlywise approach to the game of love. In contrast to most of the other poems in Folger MS V.a.89, it treats women not only as fickle and

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rejecting but also as sexually hungry and aggressive. Rather than dealing with love as a formulaic verbal game of polite courtship in which the poetic speaker hopes for small signs of favor, it reveals the sexual teleology of courtly loving: “were kyssinge all the Joyes in bedde/one woman wold another wedde” (41–42). In the Harley version of these lines, the last two words are transcribed in large magiscules for emphasis. Using an old metaphor, this poem treats the male lover’s pursuit of his lady as a hunt (“staulde the deare that thow wouldest strike” [2]) and recommends a strategy of bald-faced self-promotion (“sett thy person forthe to sell” [12]), in which the lover has to be ready to spend money on gifts to win his mistress’s favor (“the strongest castell tower or towne/the golden bullet hathe beat downe” [17–18]). The lover must be persistent, undeterred by the mistress’s tricks and feigned rejection because she might “twice desire … that with suche scorne she put awaye” (30). The poem recommends the exercise of masculine physical force, since “woemen love to matche with men/and not to live soe like a sainte” (37–38). The barnyard metaphor of the penultimate stanza (“the trickes & toyes & meanes to woorke / the cocke that treades them shall not knowe” [45–46]) advertises one of the alleged feminine secrets the poem supposedly exposes (“a womans naye dothe stand for noughte” [48]). The speaker imagines not just blushing on his mistress’s part, should she “heare this songe” (50) but also physical retaliation (“she will not sticke to ringe my eare” [51]). The song has an implied male audience, whose sexist assumptions about women it confirms. It is an anticourtly, anti-Petrarchan, Ovidian approach to amorous experience akin to that found in some of the love elegies of the 1590s (several of Donne’s, for example). It also resembles the sort of exposure of sexual intrigue and trickery found in a work such as George Gascoigne’s The Adventures of Master F.J.

Anonymous Rare or Unique Poems in the Cornwallis Collection One of the anonymous poems in the collection is a love poem that uses legal metaphors to convert the theme of the stolen heart into a plea for a Petrarchan exchange of hearts (“soe give me harte for harte againe”). It appears in only two other places, one a mid-seventeenth-century compilation by Thomas Crosse (BL MS Harley 6057, f. 36), where it is labeled “A Songe,” and the other a 1654 volume printed by Humphrey Moseley, The Marrow of Complements (1654) (pp. 168–69). In the Cornwallis collection it reads: A theife was hanged of late yow hearde bycause he had his parte of stolne goods and shall yow escape that stolne have my harte

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Single Manuscripts The lawe I knowe wold cast yow quite if I wolde trye my case but for to worke yow suche despighte I cannot have the face Yet reason wold some recompence were had in any wyse perchance yow wolde give me owne but that will not suffice Yow had my harte when it was whole & soe I knowe yow found it and would yow give it me againe now yow have all to wounde it The old lawe saythe toothe for toothe & eye for eye restore soe give me harte for harte againe & I can aske no more. finis (p. 18)

[5]

[10]

[15]

[20]

(collated with the texts in BL MS Harley 6057, f. 36 [H60] and The Marrow of Complements [M]) 1 was hanged of late yow hearde] you know was hang’d of late H60; was hang’d you know M 3 shall yow escape] dost thou thinke H60; shalt thou scape M 4 that stolne have] to scape whoe hath stolne; who stollen hast M 5–8 stanza om. in H60 and M 9–16 stanzas reversed 9 Yet] Noe H60; some] that M 10 were] should be H60 11 perchance] perhaps M 13 Yow had] Thou hadst H60 M 14 &] for H60 M; found] foundst H60 15 would yow] wouldst thou H60 16 to wound] bewound M 17 tooth for tooth] eye for eye H60 18 tooth for tooth] eye for eye H60 19 soe] and H60; then M 20 can] will H60 M Textually, the three versions of this lyric differ considerably, and they raise the question of how widely the originally poem might have been circulated—either as a written text, a memorized one, or a song. The Harley and printed texts have four, rather than five stanzas, omitting the

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second stanza of the Cornwallis text and reversing the order of the third and fourth stanzas. Since the “fourteener” rhyme scheme does not require the first and third lines of each stanza to rhyme, some of the textual variants occur at the ends of these lines, either because phrases were rearranged or because other words were replaced. More than a half century separates the Cornwallis text from that of Moseley’s volume, one of those mid-century miscellanies or poetry anthologies that collected both older and contemporary verse for an audience outside of the original circuits of transmission. Only happenstance accounts for the survival of any texts from the period of its composition. The apparently unique, anonymous poems in the second part of Folger MS V.a.89 deserve to be known, especially since the surviving corpus of mid-Elizabethan verse is so relatively small. I number these untitled poems for ease of reference:40 No. 1 Come sweete delighte & comforte carefull mynde: That pynes to deathe with sighes of deepe dispayre helpe now in tyme & shew thy selfe in kynde that may doe good to dryve awaye my care I call to her who flyes awaye from me and letts me lyve with tormentes as yow see Beholde my lyfe is tormentes all unknowne that flyes dispayer & liveth still in thrall weryed with woes which makes my heart to grone41 that feedes great greyfes which seemes to be but small that hathe no joyes but sorrowe still in hearte to comforte me with cares to make me smarte My Joyes be small my comfortes be but colde nor pytye here no creature takes on me But letts me lyve with crabbed cares untolde yet still ere longe I hope delighte to see And bannyshe cares that murthers me with payne and welcome Joyes when sorrowes shalbe slayne/ finis (p. 16) No. 2 Content above from god is sente content yow said what ere yow ment and that I may your hearte obtayne I praye yow say content againe

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Single Manuscripts Content is pleased & soe am I and soe wilbe untill I dye and this assurance shalbe still that all my love my force & skill to yow Ile vowe to yow Ile give and honor yow while that I live./ finis (p. 21) No. 3 Ye heavenly gods pertakers be with me helpe to bewayle my harde & haplesse state & with one voyce lament his miserye and seeke revenge on that same cruell fate by whose decree to false & deadlye doome I loose, whoo me, my lyfe my Joy my roome I served once a saint in showe devyne bedecte with all dame natures heavenly giftes woe me holas the leaste parte myne In her I founde to many fickle shyftes wherfore I say as hardlye one rewarded she hathe of late my selfe my love discarded Her name was once first sett in dians booke & then the hilles the rockes her prayse did sounde but now holas the worlde dothe on her looke & murmures [a] that whose < >42 dothe me wounde wherfore I say thus muche before I goe she runnes the course to woorke her shame my woe Sithe then she is resolved that course to take & will rewarde my faythe with deepe disdayne here loe the worlde pertakers I doe make of my trew harte thus hardly by her slayne which moughte noughte els but honor to her ever & yet she did requite my trewe faythe never wherfore I saye fyne showe false heart adieu of thy harde harte no longer will I talke but seeke henceforthe my selfe like [ ]/43 finis (pp. 24–25)

o

woe

Courtly and Satellite Courtly Culture No. 4 what meanest thou hope to bread me such myshappe mishappes doe burthen my amased mynde my mynde amased cares will sone inwrappe with cares inwrapt what comfort shall I finde I fynde alas my hope is all in vayne my Joye anoye my pleasure proves a payne Then see fonde hope what fickle thinge thou arte A vayne delighte ingendred by care bredde in the brayne encoraginge the hearte with folyshe Joye but yeldinge deepe dispayre winged to flye but hoveringe in waste for why thy ancour holdeth the to faste Then hope farewell I liste not live by chaunce for had I wiste dothe brede a slender gayne Happe sett on hazarde seldome dothe advance or sett alofte the poore and simple swayne I see my selfe allreadye sett on shore then happe what will for I can hope no more. finis (p. 27) No. 5 Harde is his happe who leades his lyfe by losse harder his fate who livethe still in love The former sendes him home by weepinge crosse the lattars cares no fortune can remove Then rather seeke to wayle thy losse awhile then live by love and soe thy selfe beguile finis (p. 28) No. 6 Passe gentell thoughtes to her whom I love beste whether she lye in her restinge bedde whether to boarde she have her selfe adreste whether with notes she Joyes her pleasante heade whether to mirthe she doe her selfe prepare goe packe I saye & tell her all my care If If If If

in her bed tell her I cannot sleepe at her boarde tell her I cannot eate at her musicke tell her I doe weepe merrye say sorrow my cares doe threate

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Single Manuscripts Goe packe in haste & tell her all my woe thou mayste full soneo content thy Mistres soe o soon Saye wakinge love cannot abide to wincke Saye raginge love hathe loste his former taste Saye solemne love cannot abide to singe Say carefull love delightethe not in haste Tell her good thoughtes how I my state deplore she will perhappes give yow some thankes therfore. Yet Yet Yet Yet

if if if if

I I I I

sleepe not I shall wante my reste eate not I shall faynte for foode singe not cares wilbe my gueste Joye not solemne is my moode Then packe in hast good thoughtes & lett her knowe Howe I doe dye alas immerito finis. (pp. 28–29)

No. 7 I often wyshe it were not done and yet undone wolde doe againe now thrives now spoyles good will new sowne I like I lothe I lose I gayne I lacke I have I love I hate my frynd my foe my peace my fate I reape riche comforthe of my care I glorye greatlye in my greife I famyshe when I finde great fare I fill in place of least releife I dye in hope & live by doubte my blisse & bayne have both one roote I cannot breake that I have buylte nor end the worke that I begunne if more I make it wilbe spilte if still I stand what gaine I then in laborinthe my lyfe I leade for doubtfull steppes I daylye treade Two pathes I see that men may use this goethe to wealthe that leades to wante I may yet never dare I chose

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lest fancye force me to recante that serves my wealthe may be my woe I stand in doupte & yet I goe With frindshippe fraughte my shippe now sailes in her adventure great I make my minde a masse of golde ther layes to doubtfull seas I them betake if safe on shore I shalbe bliste if lost I love with better lyfe finis (p. 30) These lyrics display some metrical and prosodic variety, but have a consistency of style. The dominant form is the six-line pentameter stanza used in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis (ababcc)44 (Poems 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6). Poems 2 and 7 are in tetrameters, the former in six-line stanzas with rhymed couplets, the latter in six-line stanzas with the same rhyme scheme as the pentameter poems (ababcc). Written in the style popularized by the many editions of Tottel’s Miscellany and many of the poems in the much-reprinted Elizabethan anthology The Paradise of Dainty Devices,45 the poems are Petrarchan courtly love-complaints and palinodes, the sort of verse written in the early and mid-Elizabethan period by such poets as Gascoigne, Dyer, and Oxford: in fact, given the few surviving poems we can confidently ascribe to Dyer and Oxford, it is tempting, given the contents of this manuscript, to suggest that they might have composed some of these anonymous pieces.46 In these poems, generic terms such as “care,” “dispayre,” “hope,” “delighte,” “pytye,” and “happe” are used to express the vicissitudes of love and desire in a courtly setting, an environment in which, from the time of Sir Thomas Wyatt, or of his English and Continental predecessors, competitive male lovers and their rejecting, fickle, or betraying mistresses played out their polite and devious game. In The Paradise of Dainty Devices, such poems often have general titles such as “Wantyng his desire, he complayneth” (No. 24 in Rollins’s edition) or “Not attaining to his desire, he complaineth” (No. 84). Here Poem 1 is the complaint of a rejected lover (“I call to her who flyes awaye from me”) who still hopes for “delighte.” Poem 2 is a more sophisticated gesture of poetic teasing, as the lover converts the word spoken by the mistress, “content,” into a wished-for acceptance to which he can respond with a declaration of fidelity and respect. Poem 3 is the palinode spoken by a betrayed lover getting revenge on his “fickle” mistress, who has lost her reputation for chastity and has become the object of salacious gossip. Poem 4 is the complaint of a disillusioned, despairing lover who bids farewell both to “vayne delighte” and “hope.” Poem 5 is also a rejected lover’s rejection of love. Poem 6 is the suffering lover’s plea to his

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mistress to assuage his (conventional, Petrarchan) love-suffering— sleeplessness, lack of appetite, weeping, despondency: he is in the process of dying for love though he is “immerito,” the term suggesting both that he does not deserve to die and, contradictorily, that he may be unworthy of her. Poem 7 reads like the complaint of an unfortunate lover, but it also may express other kinds of aspiration and desire—for material and social success. Textual and cultural issues are connected when we consider the seven apparently unique anonymous lyrics and the poem sometimes attributed to Shakespeare. To take the latter first, this much edited piece, printed in its own time and now reproduced in some editions of Shakespeare’s complete works, has received a lot of attention, largely because of the author-centered focus of most textual editing and because of Shakespeare bardolatry. The seven apparently unique anonymous poems, on the other hand, are ignored—unedited because they are not associated with prominent authors. But these apparently unique poems are valuable additions to a mid-Elizabethan poetic corpus, especially in their juxtaposition to the poems of Dyer, Sidney, Ralegh, and Oxford in this manuscript, because they help define a mid-Elizabethan courtly poetic idiom and cultural style in which the literary and the social or sociopolitical meet.

Conclusion A long time ago, writing about early Tudor verse, H. A. Mason complained about the ways the poetry of Wyatt and his contemporaries spoke a shared social language: By a little application we could compose a dictionary of conventional phrases which would show that many of these poems … are simply strung together from these phrases into set forms. There is not the slightest trace of poetic activity. The reason, I suggest, is that no poetic activity was attempted. Wyatt, like the other court writers, was merely supplying material for social occasions. Consequently the study of these poems belongs to sociology rather than to literature.47 Without subscribing to Mason’s narrow definitions of the literary and the poetic, we might say the same thing about mid-Elizabethan verse, but value, rather than deplore, the social functioning of these poetic texts. The pieces presented above share a common language rather than advertise quirky individualism. They speak the shared fantasies, aspirations, and perceptions of a group rather than the unique point of view of a single person, though such poetry might have been composed and received in specific social circumstances that energize their general or

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typical expressions and they were later used or read by individuals in new contexts, taking on new meanings. Like other mid-Elizabethan poems, they point to the need for appreciative understanding of their cultural functioning—both individually and in collections contemporary men and women owned and valued.

Appendix (First-line index of poems in Folger MS V.a.89, with authorship, page number, and appearances in other manuscripts48) A satyre once did runne awaye for dread [Sir Philip Sidney], p. 23; Bod. MSS Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 8v and e Museo 37, f. 237v; BL MS Harley 7392, f. 25; Folger MS H.b.1, f. 220; NLW Ottley f. 3 A theife was hanged of late yow hearde [Anon.], p. 18; BL MS Harley 6057, f. 36 and Wing M719, pp. 168–69 (The Marrow of Complements, 1654) As rare to heare as seldome to be seene [Sir Edward Dyer], f. 17; Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 7v; BL MSS Harley 6910, f. 173, and 7392, f. 23 ascinde yt is to swans [John Bentley], p. 1; apparently unique copy By due desertes deme all my deedes which sheweth every fruite [Anon.], p. 20; Arundel Harington MS f. 165v49 Caulinge to mynde myne eye went longe aboute [Sir Walter Ralegh], p. 19; Bod. MSS Ash. 781, p. 138, Rawl. Poet. 31, f. 2, Rawl. Poet. 84, f. 58, Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 104v, and Rawl. Poet. 153, f. 20; BL MSS Harley 4064, f. 232, 6910, f. 142v, 7392, f. 36v, Add. 15227, f. 88v, and Stowe 962, f. 85v; Bangor, University College of North Wales MS 422, p. 96; Cam. MS Dd.5.75, f. 27; Folger MSS V.a.103, f. 57, and V.a.162, f. 89; Lewes, East Sussex Record Office RAF/F/ 13/1; New Haven, Yale Osb. MS b 205, f. 27v; New York Public Library, Arents No. S288, p. 106; University of Nottingham, Portland MS Pw V 37, p. 59; Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Record Office ER 93/2, f. 191v Come sweete delighte & comforte carefull mynde [Anon.], p. 16; apparently unique copy Content above from god is sente [Anon.], f. 21; apparently unique copy farewell false love thow oracle of lyes [Sir Walter Ralegh], p. 10; Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 48; BL MSS Add. 36484, f. 53 and Harley 7392, f. 37; NLW MS 473B, f. 9v; Arundel Castle, Arundel Harington MS, No. 235; Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS II.4.109, p. 110; Cam. MS Hengrave 71; Harv. fMS eng. 1285, f. 72v; London, National Archives MS SP 46/126, f. 123v Harde is his happe who leades his lyfe by losse [Anon.], f. 28; apparently unique copy I often wyshe it were not done [Anon.], 30; apparently unique copy

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I sayd & swore that I wolde never love [Anon.], 31; Bod. MSS Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 93 and 172, f. 7; BL MS Harley 7392, f. 26 I woulde if it were not as it is [Sir Edward Dyer], p. 9; Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 6; BL MSS Harley 6910, f. 149v, 7392, f. 23v; Cam. MS Dd.5.75, f. 43v; Harv. MS Eng. 1494, f. 5 If I might change my forme. and god anewe me make [John Bentley], p. 1; apparently unique copy My care to keepe my woorde by promyse due [Sir William Cordell50], p. 14; BL MS Add. 23229, f. 52; Arundel Harington ms, f. 215; Hunt. MS HM 198, pt. 2, f. 42v Passe gentell thoughtes to her whom I love beste [Anon.], p. 28; apparently unique copy Pitty is dead and gon. that shulde have easde my case [John Bentley], p. 5; apparently unique copy Prometheus when first from heaven hye [Sir Edward Dyer], p. 21; Bod. MSS Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 8, and e Museo 37, f. 237v; BL MSS Harley 6910, f. 154v, and 7392, f. 25; Folger MS H.b.1, f. 220; NLW Ottley Papers, f. 3 Sittinge alone upon my thought in melancholye moode, p. 13; Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 11; BL MS Harley 7392, f. 63; Arundel Harington MS, f. 130v;51 Dublin, Marsh Library MSZ3.5.21, f. 20v Small rule in reasons wante [Anon.], p. 32; Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 116v; BL MS Harley 7392, f. 33 The pellycan. of nature nothing kinde [John Bentley], p. 4; apparently unique copy The saylinge shippe with Joy at lengthe doth touche their longe desired porte [Richard Edwards], p. 7; BL MS Add. 26737, f. 107 The state of France as nowe it standes [Anon.], p. 32; Bod. MSS Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 104, and Tanner 169, f. 70v; BL MSS Egerton 2642, ff. 232v and 324v, Harley 3787, f. 214v, and 7392, f. 62v; Cam. MS Dd.5.75, f. 29; Hunt. MS EL 6893, f. 48v; Marsh Lib. MS Z3.5.21, f. 22; Univ. Nottingham Clinton MS C1 LM 19 Thoughe I seeme strange sweete frynd be thow not soe [Anne Vavasour?], p. 8; Bod. MSS Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 17, and 172, f. 5v; BL MSS Harley 6910, f. 145, and 7392, f. 40 weare I a kinge I mighte commaunde contente [Earl of Oxford], p. 7; BL MSS Add. 22583, f. 95v, 50203, f. 58v, and Harley 6910, f. 140v; Manchester, Chetham Library Mun.A.4.15, f. 55 Wearte thou a kinge yet not commaund contente [Sir Philip Sidney?],52 p. 7; Manchester, Chetham Library Mun.A.4.15, f. 55 what meanest thou hope to bread me such myshappe [Anon.], p. 27; apparently unique copy When first my deere I thee beheld [John Bentley], p. 3; apparently unique copy When I was faire and yonge then favoure graced me [Earl of Oxford?]

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Queen Elizabeth I?], p. 12; Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 1; BL MS Harley 7392, f. 21v; Cam. MS Dd.5.75, f. 38v; Folger MS V.a.262, f. 169 when that thyne eye hathe chose the dame [Anon.], p. 25; BL MS Harley 7392, f. 43; Folger MS V.a.339, f. 191v; The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare (1599), sigs. D1-4 and (1612), sigs. D1-2. Wher one woulde be ther not to be [Sir Edward Dyer53], p. 22; apparently unique copy Ye heavenly gods pertakers be with me [Anon.], p. 24; apparently unique copy Yf I should weepe & weale my does till death [John Bentley], p. 5; apparently unique copy [ ] deepe that surgions can not search [John Bentley], p. 2; apparently unique copy

Notes 1 William H. Bond, “The Cornwallis-Lysons Manuscript and the Poems of John Bentley,” in Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies, ed. James G. McManaway, Giles E. Dawson, and Edwin E. Willoughby (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1948), 683–93, discusses the manuscript’s provenance and contents. He notes that it is an octavo in nineteen sheets. In referring to its contents, I follow the Folger’s penciled-in page numbers rather than referring to individual folios. 2 Bond, 686. 3 This suggestion that the poems were transcribed by him was made by Bond, 688, though this author’s identity is uncertain. Hilton Kelliher, “Unrecorded Extracts from Shakespeare, Sidney and Dyer,” English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700, 2 (1990): 183, suggests John Bentley might be the person of that name “who matriculated pensioner from St John’s on 26 June 1577.” 4 Bond, 691–93, has provided a first-line index with authorial identifications for many of the poems. 5 These items have been checked in Steven W. May’s and William A. Ringler, Jr.’s Elizabethan Poetry: A Bibliography and First-Line Index of English Verse, 1559–1603, 3 vols. (London and New York: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004) and the Folger Index. For a first-line index of the poems in this manuscript which corrects and supplements that found in Bond’s essay, see the Appendix to this chapter. 6 See, for example, William Ringler, The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962); Steven May, Elizabethan Courtier Poets: The Poems and their Contexts (Columbia, MO: University of Missouti Press, 1991); and Michael Rudick (ed.), The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh: A Historical Edition (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and The Renaissance English Text Society, 1999). 7 This is Bond’s estimate (695). 8 See Rosalind K. Marshall’s biography of Anne Cornwallis in the ODNB: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/68036 (accessed 29 January 2020). Marshall points out that Anne’s father, Sir William Cornwallis purchased from the Earl of Oxford a London house, Fisher’s Folly, which “had served as a centre for the many poets and dramatists patronized by Oxford …

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9

10

11 12

13

14

Single Manuscripts Presumably the poems in the anthology had been found in manuscript in Fisher’s Folly after Sir William and his daughter moved in … ” See Alan H. Nelson, Monstrous Adversary: The Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), 319–22. The purchase of the house is evidence of the ongoing connection of the Cornwallis family and the Earl. Marshall speculates that some friend or relative had a professional scribe copy poems “chosen to please a romantic adolescant.” Anne’s agency in manuscript transmission of texts, in this view, would have been quite limited. For a recent discussion of women’s participation in the composition, circulation, and collecting of poetry in the socially restricted environment of manuscript circulation, see Jane Stevenson, “Women, Writing and Scribal Publication in the Sixteenth Century,” English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700 9: Writings by Early Modern Women (2000): 1–32, and the collection of essays in Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Writing: Selected Papers from the Trinity/Trent Colloquium, ed. Victoria E. Burke and Jonathan Gibson (Aldershot, U.K. and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004). See also my own discussion of “Women and the Manuscript System,” in Manuscript, Print and the English Renaissance Lyric (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), 48–61. A subsequent owner of this manuscript, Samuel Lysons, inserted a family tree for Anne Cornwallis to demonstrate her connection to the de Veres. For an edition of Oxford’s poetry, see May, The Elizabethan Courtier Poets, 269–86. H. R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts 1558-1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 257–59, has discussed the Cornwallis family and its social and courtly connections. Philip Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple: An Elizabethan Dramatist in His Social Setting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), 127–28, argues that the character Sir Edward Fortune in Martson’s Jack Drum’s Entertainment was based on Sir William, who had three daughters other than Anne, one of whom is satirized in the play. See my essay, “‘Love is not love’: Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences and the Social Order,” ELH 49 (1982): 396–428. See my essay on this manuscript, “Humphrey Coningsby and the Personal Anthologizing of Verse in Elizabethan England,” in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts IV, ed. Michael Denbo and W. Speed Hill (Tempe, AZ: Renaissance English Text Society and Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2008), 71–102. For an edition of this manuscript, see Jessica Edmondes (ed.), Elizabethan Poetry in MS: An Edition of British Library MS 7392(2) (Toronto: ITER for the Renaissance English Text Society: 2021). This anthology has been edited by Laurence Cummings as “John Finet’s Miscellany” (Ph.D. Diss., Washington University, 1960), but the proof of Finet’s ownership has yet to be demonstrated conclusively. I discuss this manuscript and the collection associated with Coningsby in Manuscript, 63–67, 139–41, 176–81, et passim. The twelve are: “A satyre once did runne awaye for dread” (p. 23), “As rare to heare as seldome to be seene” (p. 17), “Caulinge to mynde myne eye went long aboute” (p. 19), “farewell false love thow oracle of lyes” (pp. 10–11), “I sayd & swore that I wolde never love” (p. 31), “I woulde if it were not as it is” (p. 9), “Prometheus when first from heaven hye” (p. 21), “Sittinge alone upon my thought in melancholye moode” (p. 13), “Small rule in reasons wante” (p. 31), “The state of France as nowe it standes” (pp. 32–33), “Thoughe I seeme strange sweete frynd be thow not soe” (p. 8), “When I was

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15 16 17 18 19

20

21

22

23 24

25

26 27

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fair and yonge then favoure graced me” (p. 12). The thirteenth is “when that thyne eye hath chose the dame” (pp. 25–26), which appears in Harley 7392, but not Rawl. Poet. 85. Of the poems which Folger MS V.a.89 shares with both Rawl. Poet. 85 and Harley 7392, only one, “Small rule in reasons want” (p. 31), appears not to have survived in any other manuscript. Woudhuysen, 278–86. I am indebted to Steven May (personal communication) for this information. Cummings, 33–45. For a discussion of Rawl. Poet. 85 and of St. John’s College, Cambridge, as a “centre of verse transmission during the 1580s,” see Kelliher, 179–82. Bond, 685, dates most of the poems in the 1570s and early 1580s. Bond, 685–86, notes “the notorious affair between Oxford and Vavasour… became a public scandal in 1581, the echoes reverberating some four or five years longer.” Cf. the discussion of Anne Vavasour in E. K. Chambers, Sir Henry Lee: An Elizabethan Portrait (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 150–62, Nelson, 267–73, and Ilona Bell, Elizabethan Women and the Poetry of Courtship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 74–88. Oxford ruined his chances of preferment by this indiscretion. This version of the poem varies considerably from the versions found in Manchester, Chetham’s Library Mun. A.4.15: see The Dr. Farmer Chetham MS, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Manchester: Chetham Society Publications, vol. 89, 1873); BL MSS Harley 6910 (f. 140v) and Add. 22583 (f. 95v) and the printed version (in John Mundy’s Songs and Psalmes [1594], xxvi). I am grateful to the first-line index included in L.G. Black, “Studies in Some Related Manuscript Poetical Miscellanies of the 1580s,” 2 vols. (Ph.D. Diss., Oxford University, 1970), 2.395–451, for the references to the other versions. See The Farmer-Chetham MS, ed. Grosart, 93–94, which identifies the poem as authored “by Sir P[hilip] S[idney].” For Sidney’s confrontation with the Earl, see Katherine Duncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney, Courtier Poet (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 163–67 and Nelson, 195–200. Bell, 88–96, makes a good case for Vavasour’s authorship of this poem, claiming that it was written to Lee as a promise of love (while she was still married to John Finch). If so, this poem may chronologically be the latest piece in Cornwallis’s collection. I am indebted to Steven May (personal communication) for this information. If Bell, 75–83, is right in identifying “Sittinge alone upon my thought in melancholye moode” (p. 13) as a poem written by Sir Henry Lee, expressing sympathetic understanding of Anne’s situation as Oxford’s mistress, this is even further confirmation of an antagonistic view of the Earl. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose (eds.), Elizabeth I: Collected Works (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 303n, accept the poem as Elizabeth’s, pointing out that it is ascribed to her in Harley 7392, f. 21v, and in Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 1. Because, however, the piece seems to be based on the male fantasy that the withholding woman will eventually regret her behavior, I find it hard to accept the Queen’s authorship. Likewise, Dyer’s “As rare to heare as seldome to be seene” (p. 17) and “Wher one woulde be ther not to be” (p. 22) speak this same language. Woudhuysen, 258. He points out, 257–59, that Sir William Cornwallis was the son of the recusant Sir Thomas Cornwallis, on whose behalf Sir Philip Sidney had dealt with Sir Francis Walsingham. Hilton Kelliher, 182, connects Folger MS V.a.89 with East Anglian social circles with which some other manuscript collections featuring the work of Sidney and Dyer have been associated.

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28 As May, Elizabethan Courtier Poets, 297, notes, the copy of “Wher one woulde be ther not to be” is an apparently unique one and the ascription to Dyer, which he accepts, has been partly effaced in the manuscript. 29 I include the Bentley poems, which are similar in style to the pieces in the second half of the collection. 30 For a discussion of this poem see Steven W. May, “‘The French Primero’: A Study in Renaissance Textual Transmission and Taste,” English Language Notes, 9 (1971): 102–8. The poem is included in Rudick, Ralegh, 71. 31 Bond, 688–91, presents a diplomatic edition of these poems, but the bound copy of the manuscript also has (late-eighteenth-century?) transcriptions of them. 32 William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 456. They omit consideration of the version in Harley 7392, f. 43r-v. 33 William Shakespeare, The Poems, ed. F. T. Prince, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1960), 169–72. Colin Burrow (ed.), The Complete Sonnets & Poems, The Oxford Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 362–64. 34 Shakespeare’s Poems, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones and H. R. Woudhuysen, The Arden Shakespeare (London: Thomson Learning, 2007), 409–13. A three-stanza sampled version of this nine-stanza poem appears in two other manuscripts: BL MSS 30982, f. 52v and Sloane 1792, f. 11r-v. The latter version uses lines 43–48, 31–36 and 25–30 out of order to create, in effect, a different poem; the former has the same order, but lacks lines 32–33. These two shortened versions of the poem are closest textually to the version of the poem found in The Passionate Pilgrim, but have unique readings: “Good sooth” for “In fayth” (l. 36) and “cloudie lookes” for “frowninge browes” (l. 25), while they differ from one another, apart from the two-line omission, in three other words: “her” and “thus” of the original l. 34 (Add. 30982) for “When” and “what” (Sloane 1792) and, l. 36, “gods” (Add. 30982) for “Good” (Sloane 1792). 35 This line has the maximum number of variants among the surviving texts. 36 H corrects “wold” to “will” in this line. 37 PP1 has a typesetting error here, which is corrected to “ere” in PP3. There are also two other obvious typesetting errors in PP1 that are corrected in PP3, “hnmble” (20) and “uot” (36). The space between “party” and “all’ in line 4 is not corrected in PP3. 38 The grammar of the sentence calls for the third-person, not the secondperson pronoun. 39 It could be argued, however, that the F2 version is superior to the Cornwallis one not only in those readings it shares with H and PP1&3 (in lines 6, 10, 22, 28, 32, and 46), but also in the punning phrase “by cock you” in line 36. See Ophelia’s song in Hamlet 4.5.60–61: “Young men will do’t if they come to’t,/ By Cock, they are to blame.” 40 I eliminate one of these, Sir Edward Dyer’s poem beginning in this manuscript “Wher one woulde be ther not to be” (p. 22), which has been printed in May, Elizabethan Courtier Poets, 296–97. 41 “greve” emended to “grone.” 42 The scribe here left a blank for the disyllabic word he probably could not read. 43 Although I transcribe this poem in six-line stanzas, in the original it is incorrectly transcribed: the first two lines of the second six-line stanza are attached to the first stanza and the third and fourth stanzas are run together.

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44 45

46 47 48 49

50

51 52 53

59

The poem is also incomplete: the final stanza lacks the last word of the third line and the final three lines. Kelliher, 174, notes that this rhyme scheme “was a favourite with poets in the 1570s and 1580s. Complaints or ‘farewell’ poems composed in it often run three stanzas.” Editions of Tottel appeared in 1557, 1559, 1565, 1567, 1574, 1585, and 1587. See Hyder Rollins (ed.), Tottel’s Miscellany (1557–1587), rev. ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966). The Paradise of Dainty Devices, an anthology whose pieces were designed to be sung to wellknown tunes, was printed in 1576, 1578, 1580, 1585, 1590, 1596, 1600, and 1606. The latter contains eight poems attributed to the Earl of Oxford. See Hyder Rollins (ed.), The Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576–1606) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927). The best recent edition of Dyer’s and Oxford’s works can be found in May, Elizabethan Courtier Poets, 269–86, 287–316. H. A. Mason, Humanism and Poetry in the Early Tudor Period (London: Routledge, 1959), 171. For the information about other manuscripts, I am indebted to CELM and the Folger Index. This poem, with the first line “Deem all my deeds by due deserts which shew forth every fruit” (May and Ringler EV 5229) is by Thomas Churchyard, but, in print (Churchyardes Charge [1580]), sigs. D2v-D3, and in The Arundel Harington Manuscript of Tudor Poetry, 2 vols, ed. Ruth Hughey [Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1960], 1.279. The manuscript identifies the author of this poem as “G.M.,” but the piece is ascribed to “Cordall” in the Arundel Harington MS (Hughey 1.353–54 [Nos. 307 and 308]) in a longer version that makes it clear that the piece is a verse epistle. For biographical information about Cordell, see Hughey, 2.250–1. Hughey, 2.450–51, identifies the other manuscripts in which the poem appears and offers a full collation. Hughey, 1.215 (No. 179). The attribution to Sidney in the Farmer-Chetham MS is, no doubt, related to his status clash with the Earl. Ringler, The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, 352, however, rejects the ascription to Sidney. Perhaps doubting or rejecting the ascription, the scribe has struck through the name “Dier” after the word “finis” (p. 22).

3

The Inns of Court and London: Chaloner Chute’s Poetical Anthology (BL MS Add. 33998)

One of the richest literary environments in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods was that of the Inns of Court in London: Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, Inner Temple, and Middle Temple were intellectually charged milieux in which young men received legal training, continued their general education beyond the confines of the university curriculum, participated in the courtly and cosmopolitan life of the city, and lived in a socially attractive setting conducive to literary expression.1 Inns of Court men had connections to parliamentarians and other politically active people, urban intellectual and literary coteries such as the ones around John Donne and Ben Jonson, to theatrical circles, and to the court.2 Writers such as Sir Walter Ralegh, Sir Francis Bacon, John Donne, Francis Beaumont, and John Marston thrived within the Inns environment.3 Social networks within the Inns facilitated the manuscript circulation of texts and the literary collecting practices of individuals. A number of surviving manuscript poetic anthologies derive from the Inns environment. They illustrate not only the particular tastes and interests of their compilers but also the preoccupations of the socially and politically active group to which they belonged.4 I focus here on one of the most interesting, BL MS Add. 33998.

BL MS Add. 33998 as a Poetic Collection This manuscript is a small folio bound in old vellum, containing an anthology of 153 poems on ninety-six-leaves, each marked off by ruling, with titles and ascriptions placed in boxes and a first-line index at the end. The poems derive mainly from the second, third, and fourth decades of the seventeenth century. According to Peter Beal, the manuscript was “possibly compiled for the lawyer Chaloner Chute (d. 1659)” and was written in the hand of a “legal scribe who apparently also did work for the playhouse.”5 Chute, who was born about 1595, entered the Middle Temple in 1613, was called to the bar in 1623, became an accomplished chancery lawyer and maintained chambers at the Middle Temple, becoming an associate bencher in 1645. He had a distinguished legal and

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political career that culminated in his being unanimously elected Speaker of the House in the 1659 Parliament.6 The pieces in this collection reflect both the tastes of a particular collector and the socioliterary environment in which certain poems and groups of poems both circulated and were transcribed in a number of related manuscripts.7 The poets represented in this collection come from both a university background and from urban and courtly settings. University, especially Christ Church, Oxford, poets such as Richard Corbett, William Strode, George Morley, John Earle, Thomas Randolph, Peter Heylyn, and Henry King are well represented, but there is a broader range of other Jacobean and Caroline poets included in the manuscript: Ben Jonson, James Shirley, Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Francis Beaumont, Walton Poole, Robert Ayton, Jasper Mayne, Francis Andrews, Thomas May, Henry Blount, Sir Henry Wotton, William Davenant, Zouch Townely, John Grange, Humphrey Hyde, Alexander Gill, and Sir John Mennes. Some of these—for example, Shirley, Beaumont, Grange, and Blount—are associated with the environment of the Inns of Court.8 Surprisingly, one lyric spuriously attributed to that most famous Inns poet, John Donne, “Fly paper, kisse those handes” (f. 68r-v),9 is the only piece in this manuscript associated with that author’s name.10 The anthology begins with two erotic poems, “A Dialogue betweene Montanus and Phoebe” (ff. 2–4) and “Choyce of a Mistresse” (ff. 4–5). The first one is quite rare, found only in one other manuscript.11 It dramatizes a scene of intimacy in which a male lover, like the speaker of the fourth and eighth songs of Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, tries to persuade a coy mistress to continue and increase their physical intimacy. The second a piece about the desired qualities of a beloved. Possibly written by John Grange, it is found in in three other manuscripts as well as three printed collections.12 These poems are followed by two popular Herrick lyrics, “A Farewell to Sack” and “The Welcome to Sack” (ff. 5–7).13 All these pieces define a developing Cavalier sensibility, celebrating erotic refinement and gentlemanly swagger. They are followed by a group of poems from university sources. There are five poems by Richard Corbett: “A Letter of Doctor Corbettes to the Duke [of Buckingham] (then with the Prince in Spayne)” (“I’ve read of Ilandes floating & remov’d” [ff. 8v-10v]), “A Letter to Mr. Alesbury” (“My Brother, & much more hadst thou bene mine” [f. 10r-v]), “Upon the same Starre” (“A Starre did late appeare in Virgo’s Trayne” [ff. 10v-11]), “Upon Fayreford Windows” (“Tell me, you Antisaintes, why Glasse” [f. 11]), “To his Son Vincent, on his Birth Day” (“What I shall leave thee none can tell” [f. 11r-v]). Next is a bawdy poem misascribed to Corbett: “A Song upon naked Breastes” (“Madam, be coverd, why stand you bare?” [ff. 11v-12])—a sign, perhaps, of the reasons why this don and divine had a reputation for recreational and erotic verse.14

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The Corbett poems are succeeded by two pieces by that other Christ Church, Oxford, poet well represented in manuscript collections, William Strode: “Upon Fayreford Windows” (“I know no paynt of Poetry” [ff. 12v-13v]) and “Upon the restoring of a borrowed Watch” (“Goe and Count her better howers” [f. 13v]). The second is thematically connected to the next two poems: the first, “Upon a Watch sent unto a Mistresse” (“Goe happy Watch, into her harmeless hand” [ff. 13v-14]), is a rare poem that appears only to have survived in only one other manuscript, Westminster Abbey MS 41, f. 30;15 the second is Ben Jonson’s popular poem “On the Sand in an Houreglasse” (“Consider this small dust here in this glasse” [f. 14r-v]). Later in the manuscript, we find other Christ Church, Oxford, poetry. For example, there are seven more pieces by Strode: “Upon a fountayne” (“These Dolphins, twisting each one th’others side” [f. 47v]) “On his Mistris blistered Lip” (“Chide not thy sprouting lip, nor kill” [ff. 62v-63]) “To his Mistris” (“In your sterne Beauty I can see” [f. 69v]) “Upon the leaving some signe of bloud on his Mistris Lip upon a parting kisse” (“what mistery was this, that I should find” [f. 74r-v]) “Upon a Dissembler” (“Could any shew where Plynyes people dwell” [ff. 74v-75]) “Upon a good Leg & foote” (“If Hercules tall Stature might be guesst” [ff. 76-77]) “A Love Letter” (“Goe happy papers by Command” [ff. 77v-78])16 Though this number of poems is not an unusual one for a poet for whom manuscript was the main medium of publication, especially in collections associated with his Oxford college, both he and Corbett are strong presences in Chute’s anthology, testifying to the process by which university poetry reached a wider social circulation.17 Although some of the Corbett and Strode poems point to the world of early Stuart politics (the anti-Puritan or anti-iconoclastic pieces in particular as well as the poem about Corbett’s patron, the Duke of Buckingham), there is a continuity between some of the university verse and the more courtly, urbane, and cavalier pieces. Many of the poems in Chute’s anthology are witty and socially occasional, reflecting the urban and courtly world of sophistication to which the social, political, and intellectual elite belonged—one comically contrasted, in one of the poems, “A Clownes Journey to London” (“When I came first to London Towne” [ff. 43v–44v]), to the unsophisticated rural one. In this piece a country bumpkin looks at the sights of London with the eyes of a naïf.18 Another poem highlights the class differences between aristocrats and the London bourgeoisie:

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A Lord to a Citizen’s Wife Follow Greatnesse, & thy Betters, Nuptialls are but paynted fetters; follow time while time falls fitt, faith in wedlocke’s want of witt. Hath the Thames such dainty trimming for one poore fish alone to swim in? or is the Ayre so nimbly spred that onely one by it is fed? Or shall you, whose Christall rarenesse Dims the Thames & Phoebus fayrenesse, be made alone for one to covett who th’ more he hath, the lesse doth love it? No, yield bright Mistris to my wishes, while sence doth last, lett’s relish kisses; Lett’s twyne our Legges with twisted art, & grow one Body, & one heart, And when at last death us controlls let us with one kisse part Two soules. (f. 56r-v) This argumentative, Ovidian seduction poem is in the tradition of the urbancentered love elegies John Donne composed in an Inns of Court setting.

Chute’s Collection and its Social Environment One can, perhaps, detect in the collection the presence of a social network to which Chute and his friends belonged. For example, the manuscript not only has a long poem by Henry King, “To Mr. Henry Blount upon his Voyage to the Levant” (“Sir, I must ever owne my selfe to be” [ff. 47v-50]),19 but also two poems by Blount himself: “Upon his kissing a Ladyes Muffe in the Church” (“They who peculiar Saintes implore” [f. 31]) and “To his Mistris” (“Those that against Loves kingdome rayle” [f. 31]). The first of the Blount poems is found in three affiliated Inns of Court collections (BL MSS Sloane 1446, f. 41v and Add. 21433, f. 156v and 25303, f. 170v) as well as in Peter Calfe’s London collection (BL MS Harley 6917, f. 41v), the “Stoughton manuscript,”20 and two other manuscripts (BL Add. MS 25707, f. 22 and Folger MS V.b.43, f. 27v): They who peculiar Saintes implore their meanest Reliques doe adore, Then wonder not I thought it blisse to steale from Celia’s Muffe a kisse;

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Single Manuscripts nor mervayle that this gentle Theft my Breast hath of a heart bereft: It was a just inflicted smart for sacriledge, to lose a heart. Had I but for it had a Touch of her sweet Lip or hand, twere such a glorious prize as never fate had sold poore heart at such a rate. Hen: Blount (f. 31)

As in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, where the author uses Sophie’s muff for comic effects, the muff is a sexual fetish: it is no surprise to read in John Aubrey’s account of Blount that he was “pretty wild when young, especially addicted to common Wenches.”21 The second Blount poem appears only to survive in two other related Inns manuscripts (BL MSS 25303, f. 171 and Add. 21433, f. 157): Those that against Love’s kingdome rayle give to their froward soules the veyle of his wrongd name, whose purer Joy their owne Jarres mix with much annoy. Like sicke men, whose distemperd Gaule things sweetest oft doe bitter call. Come faire one, we’le be none of those, lett our soules parley in a Close of fast embraces, where each kisse shall prophesy a greater Blisse. This constant hope makes me susteyne a life which else I held in vayne. Hen: Blount (f. 31) Such early Cavalier eroticism was fashionable in late Jacobean and early Caroline England. Blount was a member of Gray’s Inn in the 1620s before he went abroad in 1629 and made his famous visit to the eastern Mediterranean in 1634,22 thus sharing the same social milieu as Chute in the 1620s. One of the peculiarities of this manuscript collection is the presence of fifteen poems by the poet-dramatist James Shirley: 1. “On the Lady Rivers thought to dye by extreame griefe” (“Gentle Eyes, your teares distill” [f. 34]) 2. “Upon a Parson’s Death” (“for those that leave no Monument” [f. 34r-v]) 3. “His Epitaph on a small piece of Marble” (“No more Marble lett him have” [f. 34v])

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4. “Epitaph on the most faire & vertuous Lady, E: S:” (“If, to mayteyne [sic] the use, I must” [f. 34v]) 5. “An Elegy on the Death of King James” (“When busy fame was almost out of Breath” [f. 35r-v]) 6. “Upon a Lady’s Death” (“Death, that on humane flesh doth use to feed” [f. 36]) 7. “On her Child, sicke of the small Pockes” (“What hath my pretty Child, misdone” [ff. 44v-45]) 8. “Good morrow to the wonder of her Sex” (“Good morrow unto her, who in the Night” [f. 45]) 9. “The Goodnight” (“Good night to her, who when she sleepes” [f. 45r-v]) 10. “The Passing Bell” (“Hearke how Chymes the passing Bell” [ff. 45v-46]) 11. “To a yong Lady weeping” (“Sweet, dry thy eyes, If it be Love” [f. 46]) 12. “Chlorinda’s Garden” (“Fayne would I have a Plott of ground” [f. 46r-v]) 13. “Upon a Bird presented to his Mistris” (“Walking to tast the welcome Spring” ff. 46v-47])23 14. “To his over daring thoughtes” (“Proud man, no more; let not thy eyes” [f. 47]) 15. “Thankes for an Entertaynment” (“Ladyes, whose first stile is good” [f. 65r-v]). This is the largest of number of Shirley poems surviving in a single manuscript with the exception of Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 88, the main manuscript collection of his verse. The first, second, fourth, ninth, and eleventh poems were not included in the 1646 edition of Shirley’s verse. This manuscript is the only one with copies of the seventh, ninth and fourteenth poems. Clearly the scribe or Chute himself had special access to Shirley’s work. Peter Beal speculates that, since Shirley was a member of Gray’s Inn after 1624, the Inns’ environment was the one in which his poems probably first circulated.24 In style and subject matter, these fashionably witty poems fit well into Chute’s collection; as texts circulating in the environment in which both Chute and Shirley functioned, they point to a shared sensibility and set of attitudes. There are other signs of the collection’s and the owner’s connection to this socio-political milieu. For example, several poems reflect legal interests: a legal epigram, “The Law hanges Theeves for their unlawfull stealing” (f. 29v), another on Sir Nicholas Hyde’s becoming Lord Chief Justice in 1627 (“Justice of late hath lost her wittes” [ff. 29v-30]),25 and a piece associating lawyers with drunken conviviality:

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Single Manuscripts Epigram The Lawyers lately did in frendship Jarre and did commence their Suite at Bacchus Barre; Their Jury were Pintes, Quartes & Pottle Pottes, the Verdict being given, together plottes Sir Henry Burdeaux, & sir Hugh Canary to mount the cause top with a Susurrary: But then a Procedendo’s26 force was able to cast one Lawyer underneath the Table; Another thought it fitting to demurre, and slept i’th’Chymney cause he could not stir. Thus, though at Westminster they make men stoope, The Lawyers Case was acted at the Hoope. (ff. 50v-51)27

Another poem, “On the Lawyers Masque. 1634” (“Now did Heavens Chariotteare, the Dayes great star” [ff. 64v-65]) probably refers to James Shirley’s The Triumph of Peace (1634), an incredibly expensive production designed to entertain King Charles and to profess the four Inns of Court’s allegiance to the monarch in the wake of the publication of Histriomastix (1632) by William Prynne, who was a member of Lincoln’s Inn.28 In this manuscript one finds poems by Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, and Thomas Randolph that were circulated before they appeared in print, some of them available in no other manuscript source: for example, Herrick’s “Epitaph on a man who had a Scold to his Wife” (“Nay, read & spare not, Passenger” [f. 33v])29 and his “To his Mistrisse” (“Come, bring your Sampler, & with Art” [ff. 61v-62]).30 Canonical poems by Carew include “To his Mistrisse” (“Dearest, thy Tresses are not Thredds of gold” [f. 52r-v]), “On Celia’s bleeding, (to the Surgeon)” (“Fond man, that canst believe her bloud” [ff. 55v-56]), “Upon his Entertaynment at Saxum in Kent” (“Though frost & snow locke from my eyes” [ff. 72r-v]), “On his Mistresse, sick of a Callenture” (“Must she then languish, & we sorrow thus” [f. 84r-v]), and the very popular piece, “On a Dead flye” (“When this flye livd, she usd to play” [f. 89r-v]). Another poem is associated here with Carew’s name and printed in a section of poems in the 1640 edition of his work that contains pieces actually written by other poets, “To his Mistris” (“A Carver, having lovd too long in vayne” [ff. 71v-72]).31 There is a translation of a poem by Jacopo Sannazaro possibly written by Carew, “In prayse of the Citty of Venice” (“When in the Adriaticke Neptune saw” [f. 71v]), a piece that is found in two other manuscripts and in five printed books. Carew was with Dudley Carleton in Venice in 1613.32 Thomas Randolph’s poem on his creditors, “Thomas Randolph on his Dun” (“Pox take you all, from you my sorrowes swell” [ff. 63-64v]), is the only piece by that poet included in the collection.

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Rare or Unique Poems in the Anthology Many of the poems in this collection are rare or unique manuscript copies. One, for example, is “Days Answer” (“I doe peepe to see you play”) to an aubade on the previous page, “To the Daybreake” (“Wherefore peepst thou, envious Day?” [f. 50]): Day’s Answer I doe peepe to see you play, & my rayes doe carry not your pleasures to bewray, therefore let me tarry. Night suites best with them that sorrow or the Saylor flying, wishing never for a morrow to descry his dying. Curse not me, nor yet my Eyes, that they see you playing, They are made unwilling spyes, authors of betraying. Was’t not I did first discover, with my blamed flashes, Love in you & in your Lover which had else bene ashes? Must I now goe gett me hence? once you could not want me, your turne servd can you dispence, saying that I haunt you? I marre not, but make your pleasure, kindling that affection which the Day as night gives leasure to be spent in action. (f. 50v) This poem is also a stanza-by-stanza response to the other poem in BL MS Harley 791 (f. 62v), part of a dialogue between lovers and the sun. Many poems were originally rooted in polite social relations. Two pieces, “Upon a Picture drawne by Mr Hall, with his pen” (“Art and nature fell at strife” [f. 59v]),33 and Jasper Mayne’s long poem “Upon Mistris Anne King’s Table Booke of Pictures” (“My eyes were once blessed with the sight” [ff. 57–58]),34 deal with visual art, the second poem suggesting a social connection to the King family circle in London.35 An apparently unique copy of a poem, here ascribed to Humphrey Hyde, offers a polite social compliment:

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Single Manuscripts In Prayse of Grey eyes. I wonder not that Jeat can draw a falling hayre, or withered straw; The Christall can doe more by much, yet in the selfe same manner touch. for it can draw the glorious Sun, and, through ites vertue, make it burne. Where ere that piercing eye is sett, there’s more commanding power & heat. Why’s ebony so much esteemed? is not the Ivory better deemd? tis more prayse t’have a bony white then such a wooden Epithite. The durant Marble is the Grey, the white the richest; Blacke we lay on those that dye for memory, and yet too sad; if Beauty dye o the Alablaster & the Panceo pansy are good for Loves rem^em^brance. The Touch stone, that true Oare can try, by th’Diamond, that’s like your eye, is rac’d asunder, and the Tuch doth grant subscription unto such. The chearfefull Day is ever bright, but Comfortlesse the pitchy Night. Compare the Crow unto the Swan when Love from all the world is gone. Who ever saw a flower blacke? or sweetnesse so much Beauty lacke? The Anademo to flora dueowreath for the head hath not one flower of sable hiew. Then you that have erroneous bin, plead ignorance for so foule a sin, Collect your Judgementes, you will say no Eye is lovely but the Grey. Humphrey Hide (f. 67r-v)

Several other poems speak in the more socially bold idiom of fashionable amorousness. There are three apparently unique copies of poems clustered together along with a rare piece by Francis Atkins. The first, in the manner of Herrick and other Cavalier poets, is: Upon a Blemish on his Mistris Lip When last I kissd thee, deare, my heart

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rappd with the sweetes thou didst impart from thy odorous Lipps, forsooke ites native harbour, and there tooke a restless [ ]36 where first ‘twas slayne, being barrd of entrance, by disdayne & anger of thy powerfull eyes; Then with thy Balmy obsequyes and sweet life renewing Breath like the fly, twas raysd from death yet still retaynes ites exile state seeking for rest at Beautyes gate. This is the Cause that foolish spyes (whose all of Judgement’s in their eyes) impute a Blemish to thy face, and from thy numbers take one grace. But let them kisse thee, & they’le sweare sigh-creating Love lyes there, armd at full with all his Dartes exhausting from their captive heartes all their sweet youth layd up [in] store of melting sighes, & leaves them poore. Yet since thy stricktnesse doth deny this unto all, their heresy will still remayne, unlesse thou please, out of thy pitty, to release my hourely plaintes, by giving rest unto my heart, thron’d in thy breast. Be pleasd not onely then to owne it thus for my sake but thy owne; Thy owne & mine, for it so plac’d, I may be eased, thou be grac’d. (ff. 72v-73) This is followed by a poem that also appears in Folger MS V.a.97 (p. 55), a seventeenth-century manuscript, the first 201 pages of which Peter Beal identifies as compiled by someone at Oxford over an extended period: Upon a Woman lame in her foote What viperous payne was that which in her foote would undermine this precious Cedars roote? Monster of nature, is it not thy shame to spoyle the groundworke of so choice a frame; and, like an envious worme, to lye below

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Single Manuscripts gnawing the Stem whereon such roses grow? Was she, Achilles like, all ore so sound that onely in her foote thou couldst her wound? No, twas not this, thou didst her love, I know, and therefore onely cam’st to kisse her Toe. And have I such a Rivall? can there be a hope of any Truce twixt thee & me? Am I the worse disease, that thou canst find an entertaynment? she, to me unkind? No, no, I know thou wast not welcome there, she cur’d thee, not for pitty but, for feare. She trod thee downe, as if she meant to prove that she was pale with anger, not with love. She wished thee further, and her lightning eye did say, twas payne to her thou camst so nigh. At last she banishd thee, & looke thou to’t, come but agayne, she’le tread thee under foote. P: F: A: (ff. 72v-73)37

An apparently unique politely amorous poem, in six quatrains, follows pieces by Carew, Strode, Sir Robert Ayton, Walton Poole, Nicholas Oldisworth, and Peter Heylyn (most of which originated in a Christ Church, Oxford literary environment). Its title indicates the loose use of the term “Sonnet” in the period to label a variety of lyrics and songs: A Sonnett 1. Lady, your eyes have dazd my heart and putt it to a tryall; for which, I what ever be the smart, tis arm’d against denyall. 2. My weapon’s love, whose length & size is measured with the life; The field your Breast, where onely lyes The < > ^place^ to end this strife. 3. And that faire play may without feare to eyther be imparted; Truth shall wayte on, as Second there, though we come single hearted. 4. Now if your mind prove not too faint for what your eyes have spoaken,

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keepe promise, when the day you paynt, and see it not be broken. 5. Then howsoere our fates dispose when we the Combate try, Yet like Two valiant frendly foes we’le eyther lyve or dye. 6. But if, deterr’d by some affright, this Challenge you disclayme, Let it not vex you, though I write a Coward to your name. (f. 78v) This piece is somewhat unusual in using as a love metaphor the upperclass institution of the duel, a practice King James condemned in 1613 and 1614 proclamations and which some playwrights, including William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton used as dramatic material.38 A reference to dueling in the Jacobean and Caroline periods could allude to the gentleman’s code of honor, but also to such fundamentally illegal activity as a persisting social problem. This poem is followed by two other apparently unique poems: “The Resemblance” (“I had a hope (but now tis fled), ff. 78v–79v) and “Love concealed (“That I doe this, doe not wonder,” f. 79v). Some of these politely amorous pieces, the last of which may be a song-text, may represent the compositional efforts of the compiler and his social circle. Literarily derivative, they are competent exercises in amorous verse. Chute’s collection contains many songs, suggesting connections with London musical circles.39 For example, the following apparently unique trochaic poem would seem to be a song text: The Checke 1. Eager eyes, why thus pursue you her whose Love cannot be mine; and whose brightnesse will undoe you if you look upon her shine? Distance best befittes my quiet, since I cannot her behold, but I sterve with all that Dyett, and am poore amidst my gold 2. Can your gazing quench Loves fire, can it ease a torturd mind? Can the sight allay desire where Desire is not confind?

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Single Manuscripts Could bare objectes so content me that my heart would be at peace, this pursuit should nere repent me, and your gazing should not cease. 3. But alas, you hunt a shade, that no tracing leaves to follow, swifter then that light foot Mayd so much Courted by Apollo. She whose Love in all Complying that may rayse dull mindes to pleasure yet hath power of denying by a lawfull seizure. 4. Cease then greedy eyes to rove keepe your spheares & move no further, seeke not after such a Love whose enjoyance equalles murther View the Virgen rose & Violet, seize their sweetes without Controule, and their fragrant Beautyes smile at, but avaunt her purer soule. (f. 51r-v)

This is followed by another apparently unique song: The Choice 1. Blind God, if I must love, yet tell me why my Love must be my Curse? Is it to shew thy feignd Infirmity, or for some Cause that’s worse? If for unsullyed purenesse, or a white that may delight; oh what defect I prithee show, hath your proud lilly, or the snow, that I their brightnesse should not more affect? 2. What such perfume or Beauty hath her Cheeke which by the rose is not outvyde? Or what rare mixture hath ^can^ my fancy seeke beyond the flowers in their pride? What sweetnesse hath her voyce to charme the eare more then I heare

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from th’solemne Lute? or what Compare hath her dishevelld hayre with our fine Naples silke, worth the dispute? 3. Were she a Myne of pleasure, or a Treasure excelling the rich earth, or Ocean; Had she, in her embrace that store of pleasure as to the dullest might add motion, while these are guirt with danger, what canst thou from them allow to quench desire, Ere ill bestowes his sighes that onely blowes and takes no further warmth from his Loves fire. 4. If, because blind, thou dost thy Arrowes scatter and so hast me by chance tranfix’d, and with a rusty shaft ranckling the matter, in one wound, Love & griefe hast mixd; Or if accursd by fate this mischiefe spring from her sharpe sting, oh prithee tell; so to my story It may add some glory, that by a cruell destind Love I fell. (ff. 51v-52) Both poems use common song forms in their stanzas. Other songs in the collection include “A Song in prayse of Sacke” (“Listen all I pray to the wordes I have to say” [ff. 7-8v]),40 “A Lady’s Complaynt” (“When I was young unfitt for use of man” [ff. 52v-53]),41 “A song” (“Doe not to a woman sue” [ff. 59v-60]),42 and two other apparently unique poems, the first a polite treatment of a woman’s singing, the second converting the playing of the viola da gamba to handling a woman’s body in lovemaking: upon Cynthia’s singing 1. Hearke how Cynthia sittes & singes, how the woodes & Forest ringes, and summons in the winged Quire to sitt & heare and to admire

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Single Manuscripts 2. See how the mountaynes & the rockes and Syrens with increasing flockes scowring through Neptunes hollow veynes resort to heare her heavenly straynes. 3. What with her voyce, what with her sight they were so ravishd with delight, that all her Audience in a Trice were suddenly congeald to Ice. 4. But when she stoppd, th’encanted throng hearing the Period of her song, with sorrow they ymediately dissolve againe to teares & dye. (f. 74) To his Vyol de Gambo How I love thee, oh my Vyall. lett these passions be my tryall; When thy stringed voyce is going tis, me thinkes, a brave Cocke Crowing, saving that thy voice doth beare far finer Notes then Chanticleere. When thy Necke I feele, it wakes me to all pleasure, and it makes me more to love thy amorous toying, which doth feed, yet breedes no Cloying. When upon thy Breast I dally, oh, me thinkes, it is a Valley leading to those sugred Blisses which are sweet as Lovers kisses. When betweene my legges I hold thee, tis but onely to embold thee; such embracing call my woing whose delight doth end in doingo. At each Touch I feele a rising of a Joy all sence surprizing; when my Thighes & thine doe mingle oh then how my bloud does tingle? It so much does move my spirit I no longer can forbeare it, but upon thee must be playing, running swiftly, yet not straying, And thus thou still art ravished, yet still thou keep’st thy Maydenhead;

o

copulating

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for the ofter I doe use thee I make thee sound, & lesse abuse thee. Oh my Love then, oh my Lemman,43 were thy Body not made common, yielding to each wantons handling, I should then be ever dandling. Yet I love thee, oh my Viall, lett these passions be my tryall. (f. 81r-v) The first song is a conventional praise of a woman’s singing, but the second, like other texts, makes the playing of the viola da gamba a metaphor for sexual activity.44 Various polite and witty song texts and poems about music figure prominently in Chute’s collection. Although most of the poems contained in this collection are recreational, there are some more reflective, if not religious, pieces. One rare item offers a set of moral observations on death: Upon a Deaths head 1. How silently, sad spectacle, dost thou with those pale hollowes of thy Cheekes & eyes, Checke my disorderd soule, and tell her how the house of Clay wherein she shrouded lyes must, like thy selfe, her gorgeous playster shed, And by times rage, some sly disease, or crooked Age, moulder to dust, whereof at first twas bred. How, by thy gastly Councell, is she taught to Impe her sluggish wing and, ere these Beames & rafters fall, which now are all decayd & perishing, soare to some Blisse transcending humane thought. 2. By thy bare scalpe were the world wagerd, I thy Age or Sex by no Art can discover; Thou mightst, perhaps, be matchlesse faire, each Eye a ruling Planet over every Lover? Some Mignion Statesman, cruell Judge, or may be, some foole borne rich (we have in deed too many such) some leud livd Church man, or some wanton Lady. Thou mightst be these, & more; better or worse are not grav’d on thy Brow,

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Single Manuscripts And what disease, from natures store op’d thee Deaths Dore Is not disputed now; This disguize being but the Common Curse. 3. But if thou ever didst a Body grace which shrind a soule of vertue, full of all those divine Beautyes that adorne the face, and after Death make it Angelicall; How blessd is thy Condition then, that (here strippd of those weedes from which, at best, our shame proceedes) art fixd a Cherub in heavens glorious sphere; And, with a sacred scorne, from that blessd state our curious Vanityes doest view? What sorrowes, by this change of shape Dost thou escape, which each Day throngs on us anew, while we, with griefe, doe wish thy happy fate? 4. What ere thy hap now is, or thou once wert, Holy, prophane, indifferent, foole, or wise, In these I see to what I must convert In spight of Aristotles Subtletyes. And (from the trim dresse wherein now I stalke composd by Art and what her Mimickes can impart) be levelld with that earth whereon I walke, Thou art my ringes best Motto, my sad knell by every glance on thee is rung. Each hole a Hermitage doth seeme In my esteeme Charming my pride to Dung. whilest yet unquelld, I dread not life’s farewell. (f. 83r-v)45

Death is a major theme in most manuscript poetical collections, epitaphs and elegies usually making up a significant portion of their contents.46 The poem on the death’s head, however, unlike the elegies that typically accept social hierarchy and accord social superiors the usual respect, engages in a kind of social satire, replacing social deference with moral criticism. Like Hamlet’s speech to Yorick’s skull, this poem takes an unsympathetic look at the current state of things, the “[m]ignion Statesman, cruell Judge, or may be, some foole borne rich … some leud livd Church man, or some wanton Lady” (19–20, 22) whose relic

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the skull may be. One of the rare poems in the collection, “Upon a Watch sent unto a Mistresse” (“Goe happy Watch, into her harmlesse hand” [ff. 13v–14v]) converts what looks like a developing “carpe diem” message into one of “memento mori,” criticizing “wanton Ladyes” (l. 33) who are addicted to cosmetics and fashionable dress.

Bawdy, Religious and Political Verse in the Collection Some of the poems in Chute’s collection, like those found in most of the university anthologies, are explicitly bawdy. These pieces, like the erotic love elegy, contain misogynistic humor and engage in a kind of social leveling process that counterbalances the forms of social deference found in various kinds of complementary verse. Given the connections of this anthology with the London theatrical scene, it is not surprising to find in it a copy of dramatist Francis Beaumont’s erotic epyllion, “Salmacis and Hermaphroditus” (ff. 16-29v), a piece that, like Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis and Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, catered to a taste for sophisticated prurience. Following the bawdy song, “To his Vyol de Gambo,” there is a relatively rare long poem, the erotic-burlesque piece, “The Merkin Maker” (“A lusty Lasse, that late did lose renowne” [ff. 53-55v]; see Appendix 1),47 whose witty misogyny resembles that of Nashe’s “A Choice of Valentines” and the manuscript-circulated piece about a woman’s having covert sex on a fashionable social occasion, “Nay, phewe nay pishe? nay faythe and will ye, fye.”48 “The Merkin Maker” evokes a world of upper-class sexual behavior that is uncomfortably associated with lower-class prostitution and cross-class transmission of venereal disease.49 The market for pubic hair wigs was stimulated by the hair loss due to venereal disease, particularly by professional prostitutes—hence the comic incongruity of the female protagonist’s maidenly naïveté in this narrative poem, the climax of which is her being brought to orgasm by the merkin-maker with the “Instrumentes” (l. 143) he uses to fit his product to her sexual parts. The merkin-maker is a verbal virtuoso, like other literary snake-oil salesmen such as Jonson’s Volpone (in his disguise as a moutebank) and, the quackdoctor Simon Forman. Like the latter’s female clients, the woman in this poem is presented as a sexually-awakened, willing participant in the male practitioner’s activities (ll. 141–84). She is a “Country” (l. 184) wench, but most of the work the merkin-maker finds is in “th’Court & Citty” (l. 183) in the upper-class, fashionable world of London sophisticates which Simon Forman served and in which Inns of Court men recreated themselves. Like most other collections from the 1620s and 1630s, Chute’s manuscript contains poems focusing on the court and royal family. The rare poem “Upon Queene Elizabeths Armes” (“The Lyon is the Forest

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king” [f. 29v]), which appears to survive only in two other manuscripts (Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 26, f. 82 and Yale Osb. MS b.197, p. 59), is an example of early Stuart, politically oppositional nostalgia for the Elizabethan era. Poems from the Jacobean era include two elegies on Prince Henry (“Reader, wonder thinke it none” [f. 85] and “Nature waxing old began” [f. 85r-v]), “Lady Arbella’s Epitaph” (“How doe I thanke thee, Death, & blesse thy power” [f. 36v]), “An Elegy on the Death of King James” (“He who was our life, is dead” [ff. 36v-37v]), and “Elegy on Queene Anne’s death” (“No, not a Quash [Quatch]? sad Poetes, doubt you” [ff. 37v-38]). Among the Caroline poems are two on the 12 May 1629 death of Henrietta Maria’s first son, “An Elegy on the Assention of the Second best Maryes first born Sonne” (“England & France unhappily at warres” [ff. 31v-32]) and the accompanying epitaph (“Snatch’d from our longing, hoping eyes” [ff. 32–33]).50 This manuscript, like many others from the period, gathers political poems because of their topicality rather than for their expression of a point of view with which the compiler agrees—though, of course, it was inevitable that, like his tastes, the compiler’s attitudes (and those of his associates) were often manifested in many of the poems he possessed. Nevertheless, one should not expect the pieces found in a particular manuscript to be politically consistent. For example, in Chute’s collection, the elegies for Elizabeth signal a politically oppositional idealization of her reign, while the elegy for James praises his pacifistic temperament, though it does allude to his parasitic clients. Reflecting the religious struggles of the age, Richard Corbett’s and William Strode’s identically titled poems, “Upon Fairford Windows” (ff. 11 and 12v–13v) satirize Puritan religious iconoclasm. Francis Andrewes’ widely circulated epigram on Archbishop Bancroft (“A learned Bishop of this land” [ff. 14v-15]), in praising Bancroft’s religious centrism, lays the blame of its failure on Puritan intransigence. This collection has a familiar mixture of both anti-Puritan and anti-Catholic texts. The collection contains some pieces that refer to politically important figures or that register the impact of certain national and international events and crises. There is rare copy of a poem about the Elizabethan limited support for the Dutch revolt against the Spanish, “A Riddle” (“Not long time since I saw a Cow” [f. 30]), a piece that is titled, in another manuscript, “A Representation of the states of the Low Countries under the government of the Prince of Orange” (Bod. MS Rawl. Poet.160, f. 163v): A Riddle Not long time since I saw an Cow did Flanders represent, Upon whose backe king Philip rode as being malecontent.

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The Queene of England yieldes the hay whereon the Cow doth feed and was the chiefest propp & stay at any time of need. The Prince of Orange milkd the Cow, & made his purse the Payle, The Cow did shite in Monsieurs51 hand as he held up her Tayle. (f. 30) In this manuscript, the historical referents of this poem were at least a generation out of date, but the issue of support for the European Protestant states was a live one in the second half of the Jacobean period. From the Jacobean era, “An Elegie on the Death of the Lord Chichester, Deputy of Ireland” (“Death, thou art proud & cruell, though thy power” [ff. 38v–39v]) and “His Epitaph at knockvergus” (“If that Desire or Chance thee hither lead” [ff. 39v-40]) commemorate Sir Arthur Chichester, whose eleven-year service to the crown in Ireland earned him a reputation both as a ruthless oppressor of Irish Catholics and as an administrator who consolidated England’s possession of Ireland.52 The second of these poems, an apparently unique copy, clearly assumes a strongly anti-Irish and anti-Catholic stance: His Epitaph at knockvergus. If that Desire or Chance thee hither lead, upon this Marble Monument to tread, Lett Admiration thy sad thoughtes still feed while, weeping, thou this Epitaph dost read; and Lett distilling teares thy Comma’s be as Tribute due unto this Elegy. With in this Bed of Death a Viceroy lyes whose fame shall ever live, Virtue now dyes. for he did Goodnesse & Religion nourish, and made this Land, late rude, with peace to flourish. The wildest Irish he by power did tame, and by true Justice gaynd an honour’d name. Then now, though he in heaven with Angells be, lett us on earth still love his memory. By him Interrd his noble Lady is, who doth pertake with him in heavenly Blisse; And while the earth unto them was a seate, blessed they were, being both good & great. With them doth rest their one & onely Son,

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Single Manuscripts whose life was short & so his Glasse soone run, The heaven, not earth, was his allotted right, for which he bade the world so soone good night. By them Interrd here also doth remayne his worthy Brother, by base Rebells slayne, as he in martiall & brave warlike fight opposd Incursions in his Country’s right, And in memoriall of their endlesse prayse this Monument is left to after dayes. (ff. 39v-40)

Chichester’s iron-fisted religious coercion of Irish Catholics is presented here as morally motivated and civilizing. The poem’s idealization of him extends to the family members buried alongside him. There are poems on the 1628 death of the Duke of Buckingham (“No Poettes trivial rage, that must aspire” [ff. 41–42]) and on his assassin, “A Consolation to Felton, during the time of his Imprisonment” (“Enjoy thy Bondage, make thy Prison know” [ff. 42v–43v]); “An Elegy on the death of Sir John Burgh, slayne at the Ile of Rez” (“Oh wound us not with this sad Tale, forbeare” [ff. 86-87v]) and “An Elegy on Sir Charles Kirk, slayne at th’Isle of Rez” (“How fayne would we forgett this fatall war” [f. 88r-v]), referring to the disastrous expedition led by Buckingham in 1627 to relieve the French Protestants at La Rochelle. Also included is a rare poem dealing with the downfall of monopolists and corrupt officials targeted in the 1621 Parliament, “The Cryer” (“Oh yes [Oyes], / Can any man bring Tydinges” [ff. 65v-66]). This manuscript’s copy of the last poem is the only one to name names (in the margin)—Sir Giles Mompesson, Sir Francis Michell, Sir Robert Flood, and Sir Francis Bacon.53 In the context of the late-Jacobean conflict between royal prerogative and parliamentary power, the influence of the royal favorite, the Duke of Buckingham, the unpopularity of the king’s reluctance to offer military support for Continental Protestants during the Thirty Years’ War, and the question of government corruption all loomed large in the awareness of the political and social elite. The impeachments of Mompesson and Bacon and the assassination of Buckingham represented for many the deserved punishment of those who exploited royal favor at the expense of the commonwealth. The most serious political crisis of the late Jacobean period, in which Buckingham was deeply involved, was the “Spanish Match,” King James’s plan to marry his son Charles to the Spanish Infanta as part of a strategy of European peace-making during the early stages of the Thirty Years’ War. This protracted process, running from the late 1610s to 1623, put James at odds with a more zealously Protestant group of patriots who pushed to have England more deeply involved in the

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Continental Protestant cause. Many members of Parliament opposed James’s irenicism and the king’s complete control of foreign policy. One of the most powerful political pamphleteers of the time was Thomas Scott, whose death is the subject of the longest poem included in Chute’s collection, “A distracted Elegy on the most execrable murther of Tho [mas] Scott, Preacher; who was killd by an English soldyer, in a Church Porch at Utrecht, as he entred to performe divine service” (“Keepe thy teares, Reader, & that softer sorrow” [ff. 90-96v; see Appendix 2])—a 444-line piece found also in Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 160 (ff. 5–10). The author of Vox Populi, or, Newes from Spayne (1620), Vox Dei (1623?) and several other popular pamphlets, Thomas Scott opposed the proposed Spanish Match and King James’s irenic approach to Continental religious conflict, attacking court corruption, which he associated with greed and a failure to adhere to a reformist Protestant ideal.55 He was in virtual exile in the United Provinces, serving as a chaplain to English expeditionary forces there and protected by powerful patrons who were sympathetic to his patriotic hawkishness. He was assassinated by an English soldier, John Lambert, who seems to have been deranged and delusional—though many contemporaries and the authorities wished to see the assassin as a pawn of Spain and evil Jesuits.56 As Peter Lake has argued, Scott was careful not to identify with radical Puritanism, but to stay within a broad Protestant political consensus—although his position as one writing from exile gave him the opportunity to articulate strongly opinions that many of his countrymen held, but were afraid to voice.57 Outwardly he remained loyal to his king and to the established church (though he saw the attraction of the Presbyterian form of church governance), but his rabid anti-Catholicism associated him with the hard-line reformist tradition, especially after the ascent of William Laud to ecclesiastical supremacy. He particularly criticized the Spanish Match as a project furthered by two groups: “begging and beggarly Courtyers” and “Roman Catholiques, who hoped … for a moderation of fynes, and lawes, perhaps a tolleration, and perhaps a total restauration of their religion in England ….”58 His religiopolitical criticism, however, was more general: speaking through a fictionalized Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador who had charmed King James, he suggested that Englishmen, because of the “long disuse of armes” since the 1588 Armada “were disabled and their minds effeminated by peace and luxury” (sig. B2v). Scott passionately argued for England’s involvement on the Protestant side in the contemporary continental religious warfare. In the poem found in Chute’s collection, the blame for Scott’s assassination is laid squarely on the Jesuits. The relevant lines read: What divine Patron twas that sett thee on, I argue not, blacke wretche; It must be none

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Single Manuscripts but that, that of lame Loyola returning from rape of Virgens, & from Temples burning. (As he to whom those easy Villanyes seem’d dull & short of his owne Theoryes, hatched out a fouler) To those active spirites of Rome & Spayne, the powerfull Jesuites. That, that alone, out of a Soldyer, framd thee a sacriledgious murtherer; so must Ignatius double calling be after long slumber, new revivd by thee. (ff. 92r-v; ll. 165–76)

This strongly anti-Catholic poem attacks social, especially courtly, moral corruption as well as foreign influence on English behavior and the excesses of Puritan factionalism. Alluding to the presence of Henrietta Maria and her court, which contained many (clerical and lay) French Catholics, though no Jesuits, the poem decries the foreign influences that have “Frenchifyed” or “Hispaniolizd” Englishmen or made them “Italionate” (ll. 253–54). Taking a religious middle ground, the poem also criticizes Puritan radicals who opposed the traditional ceremonies and rituals of the established church and it satirizes sectaries, especially female religious leaders (ll. 311–36). Celebrating English isolationism, the poem (contradictorily) encourages England to develop its potential international and proto-imperial power (ll. 337–66). In this chauvinistic context, Scott is a martyr-patriot, not a radical exile. His example of valor is meant to encourage “English gentry” (l. 374) to abandon their “degenerate wayes” (l. 376) and recover their martial fortitude, exemplified by the “English Talbott” (l. 384) who struck fear in the French, and Sir Francis Drake, who frightened the Spanish. Alluding to the 1624–25 Siege of Breda, during which the English unsuccessfully attempted to help the besieged Dutch, the poem contrasts past martial success with present failures. The work, then, uses the occasion of Thomas Scott’s assassination for a broad-based assault on Caroline corruption and English pusillanimity at a time of crisis for European Protestantism. Its presence in Chute’s collection, along with that of several other political poems critical of Jacobean policy and moral corruption, suggests the kind of distance from court-centered interests that is evident in contemporary parliamentary and urban political circles. The political and social criticism of the elegy for Thomas Scott is implicit in the two poems that follow it to conclude the anthology, “Upon Sir Walter Rauleigh’s Death” (f. 96v) and “On the same” (f. 96v). The first of these appears in a number of manuscripts as well as in the second edition of Wits Recreations (1641) and John Shirley’s The Life of the Valiant & Learned Sir Walter Raleigh, Knight. With his Tryal at Winchester (1677):59

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Upon Sir Walter Rauleigh’s Death Great heart, who taught thee so to dye Death yielding thee the Victory? Where tookst thou leave of life? If there, how couldst thou be so free from feare? But sure thou dyedst & quitt’dst the state of flesh & bloud, before that fate?60 I saw in every stander by pale Death, life onely in thy Eye; Farewell, Truth shall thy story say, we dyed, thou onely liv’dst, that Day. Shirley’s account of Ralegh’s death makes clear its political context: Thus died that Knight who was Spains Scourge and Terror, and Gondamor’s Triumph; whom the whole Nation pitied, and several Princes interceded for; Queen Elizabeths Favourite, and her Successors Sacrifice. A Person of so much Worth and so great Interest, that King James would not execute him without an Apology. One of such incomparable Policy, that he was too hard for Essex, was the envy of Leicester, and Cecil’s Rival; who grew jealous of his Excellent Parts, and was afraid of being supplanted by him. His head was wisht on the Secretaries shoulders, and his Life valued by some at a higher rate than the Infanta of Spain, though a Lady incomparably excelling in both the Gifts of Mind and Body.61 The victim of Spanish hostility and of King James’s weakness in the Spanish Match negotiations, Ralegh thus became a figure of Protestant patriotism and a critic of Stuart royal malfeasance. Most English regarded Ralegh as a victim of Roman Catholic manipulation of King James, if not the specific target of the hated Spanish ambassador Gondomar. The second poem, which is also found in Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50, f. 31v,62 in characterizing Ralegh’s judicial murder with his celebrated courage, also implicitly criticizes King James’s yielding to Spanish pressure to eliminate Ralegh, whose fame is secure: On the same What Worldes of people hath Death Conquered since he first aymd to take away thy Head? And yet, for all his toyle, & broken strength he gloryes to have gotten thee at length, more then all them; His wonted Sythe & Dart, because thou knowst them well, he layd apart; and with a Battell Axe, on purpose edgd,

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Single Manuscripts he steales behind, and Cheates63 thee of thy head. A Coward conquest to redeeme thy shame If thou be’st valiant, come, & meete his fame.

Along with the poem on Scott, these epitaphs conclude the anthology on a hawkishly patriotic Protestant note.

Conclusion Chaloner Chute’s anthology reflects both the serious and the recreational interests of a politically active man in early Stuart England. Roger North, into whose family Chute married, wrote of this professionally successful chancery lawyer that Mr. Chute was a man of great Wit, and stately Carriage of himself … If he had a Fancy not to have the Fatigue of Business, but to pass his Time in Pleasure after his own Humour, he would say to his Clerk, Tell the People I will not practise this Term; and was as good as his Word: And then no one durst come near him with Business. But, when his Clerks signified he would take Business, he was in the same advanced Post at the Bar, fully redintegrated, as before; and his Practise nothing shrunk by the Discontinuance. I guess no eminent Chancery Practiser ever did, or will do, the like. And it shews a transcendent Genius, superior to the Slavery of a gainful Profession.64 The contents of the poetical collection owned by this lawyer-wit have their sources in the University, the court, the London theatrical community, and the social and political networks and circles of the compiler and his associates. If there is a point of view represented, it is one interested in domestic reform and an activist role for England in Continental religious warfare. It is very much a London collection, but poems from other environments were drawn into it. Varied in its contents, it reflects, as do many similar anthologies, not only the personal tastes of the compiler but also some of the shared interests of an early Stuart social and political elite living in a time of conflict and change.

Appendix 1 The Merkin maker A lusty Lasse, that late did lose renowne because her naked Bunhill wanted downe, Swore she would pace the spacious earth about but she would find a Merkin maker out.

The Inns of Court and London Ile crosse Cocytus, by this hand, quoth she, and find him, though in helles darke vaultes he bee Ile bribe the Sun by day, & stars by night, & make them bring this Merkin man to light. Ile search each Corner65 of the Court, it may be I there may find him busy with some Lady. But as she stood, not yet resolvd in mind where she this new Mercanicke man should find, she heard a voyce, which cryde out shrill & cleare, buy Merkins, maydes, who buyes fine Merkins here? What blisse she then conceiv’d few tongues can tell, she mounted stood on Joyes high pinacle. But loe, she meetes a fine facetious Lad who on his shoulders a brave Banner had, such as the Ratcatchers doe use to beare when they the Countrey ramble here & there; whereon she spyes, after a most sharpe survey theire toothlesse mouthes rampant, turnd topsy turvy. This Motto in the middst of each did stand Punctum in medio, writt in Bastard hand. But hope & feare did her so strongly greet, like two swift running correntes when they meete. He cryes on still, she followes him apart, & fayne would speake, but dares not, pretty heart. At length she doth beseech him for to tell his Trade to her, & what he had to sell. Sweet heart, quoth he, and by the hand doth take her, tis I that am the newfound Merkin maker; To learne which Art, I did a Journey take, through the Divisions of the Zodiacke. Twas I did that that nere man did alive, twas I that passd the Tropickes Convertiveo, Twas I that made a passage through the Zones, & trac’d the Circumjacent Regions. Twas I that to the Sphericke orbes did climbe, & travelld over the Antarticke Line. Twas I that did all this, I made this Chace to find out Nature, & her dwelling place, onely to learne this Trade; and nature she Celestiall Queene vouchsafe’t it unto me; so that I cannot erre, for what I doe is done by helpe of Art & nature too. By this time she had given her passions scope, and Conquered by feare by a tryumphing hope, & dauntlesse now she doth no whitt refrayne

85 [5]

[10]

[15]

[20]

[25]

[30]

o

[35] turning

[40]

[45]

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Single Manuscripts so sets her naked Case forth bare & playne; [50] And having told the story of her griefe o with trickling teares emendicateso releife. begs He straight subscribes to furnish her desires, and she with him, & he with her retires. o into a fair umbragiousoParl private place shady [55] where Phoebus seldome showes his glittering face. Here ye, faire soule, quoth he, and ere you rise by Art I nature wrong will formalize. Then downe she gently doth begin to lye but with Degrees of such humility [60] as if sh’ had bene a Scholler unto Art to play in order a submissive part She first falls on her hand, & by & by, sinkes to her arme, & after to her thigh, then all along upon her rightest side, [65] with legges stretched out indifferently wide. Order & methode she did never lacke untill she prostrate fell upon her backe By this time he with diligence & care had made a Merkin fitting for her hayre, [70] and goes with resolution to begin o to hedge her mundifyedo fountaynes in. cleansed Now when she saw each thing compacted well, sweet sir, quoth she, once more I pray you tell, may not a kinseman, or a frend, or foe [75] place this same needfull thing where it should grow? for, trust me sir, I am a modest Mayd, and you a stranger, therefore I’me afrayd that you this Act of privacy should doe, and Chastity perhaps would chide me too. [80] You inconsiderately speake, quoth he, to place it well consistes the Industry. Observe this story now which I shall tell, which is as true as Delphian Oracle. A Merkin from a Lady once did slip [85] & lighted on a Courtiers upper Lipp, And now is growne a fashion; it, & know I graft more Merkins then ere grew below among your nonhayred Courtiers, and tis fitt because their hayre growes thinner then their witt, [90] and wisedome is as thin among the rout as watery gruell when the Oatmeal’s out. o But to the Lady’s Caseo, for onely this (pun) vagina I doe relate by a Parenthesis.

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A stayne more Capitall there could not be. [95] In the improbrious stocke of Infamy then that which she susteynd; yet you suppose These thinges were done by him that nothing knowes. And why was it? not to deterre from truth, because twas planted by her frend forsooth. [100] Then with her face erected to the spheares she speaking sighes, & sighing speakes in teares; Oh nature, nature, what was thy Intent to frustrate me of such an ornament? If in that place all be not made Compleat, [105] a small defect is a defect most great. Admitt it be but seldome seene of any, yet it is feelingly observ’d by many and trust me now, I wish you had denyde o to give me partes, then partes not ornifydeo. ornamented [110] But come, proceed, & exercise your skill, for Ile e’re winke, & then doe what you will. About his worke dexteriously he goes, and ore her face her milke white Apron throwes, her circled sayles he then aloft doth reare, [115] I call them sayles, her Petticoates they were; Descending still, till he his hand doth veyle so him as for to see her undersayle; That circled Curtayne, which still nearest lyes, and often kisses natures secresyes; [120] A silent Bedfellow, that seldome tells that which it heares, or sees, or feeles, or smells: Under which endowment all snowy white he thrustes his handes obscurely out of sight, ascending by gradation up on high [125] first to her Leg, & after to her thigh, his proud ambitious fingers all doe thirst which shall aspire unto the fountayne first. one mountes aloft, another pierceth higher, the next bore him, & then the last Creepes nigher. [130] one strives above the other for to gett, yet all keepe order, like an Alphabett, or like a packe of well compacted houndes which hunt traynescent66 upon the cheerefull Downes. And now they creepe to th’bottome of the hill [135] where runs a spring of luke warme water still, and hunt in those defective fieldes below not worth a hayre, the naked Truth is so; A barren Countrey, sterrilous alas;

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Single Manuscripts withouten Bush or Brake, as smooth as glasse. [140] Then he the Merkin takes, composd as fitt, as if h’had made the part which wanted it; Drawes forth his Instrumentes & settes it on o never was thing so concinnatelyo done; skilfully Thrustes in a searcher with two plummettes round [145] to find the depth & make it most profound. But loe, she feeles a strange intruding thing to dive & Caper in her Callid spring, She cryes, oh sir, I am undone I doubt me, what Instrumentes are those you use about me? [150] My Tooles meccanicall, sweet soule, quoth he, o which sett it sure to all perennityo; perpetuity without which Implementes I may assoone Disroabe the heavens of the beauteous Moone, or make the Sun goe backeward when I please, [155] as make it fast, without the helpe of these. And is’t no more sayd she? oh then be sure to strike it home, that it may still endure; I’le hope to strike, & stroake for stroake rebound, strike Twice for once, two Upps for your sure downe. [160] And now the Game begins, she winkes & pantes he layes on load, she no assistance wantes. Never were Bells in order struck more sweet, then both their stroakes, that doe with methode meete. The Cyclops never exercize the like [165] When they in time upon their Anvile strike. She heaves & pantes, and with a fumbling voyce she utters wordes, yet scarce doth make a noyse. Oh, oh quoth she, I faint, I fayle, I dye, I am in heaven, & yet on earth I lye. [170] By Jove & all the Delphian Godes, I vowe, I never yet felt perfect Joy till now; and then she boundes, & with such courage reares as if she meant to dart him at the spheares; now still she lyes, & winkes, & doth not stir, [175] but cryes, well done, thou sweet Artificer; By Cytheriso I thinke there nere was mayd o a slave concubine of Mark Anthony possess’d so fully with so fine a Trade. He, having done his worke, doth now forbeare, and so Concludes, & makes a full poynt [180] She having what she did desire to have payes him with more then ere he meant to crave. He for more worke to th’Court & Citty bendes,

The Inns of Court and London she for applause to th’Country Cottage wendes; Well pleased both, & well contented they, and so my Muse makes her Catastrophe.

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[185] (ff. 53-55v)

Appendix 2 BL Add. 33998 text (ff. 90-96v)

RP 160 variants

A distracted Elegy on the most execrable murther of Tho[mas] Scott, Preacher; who was killd by an English soldyer, in a Church Porch at Utrecht, as he entred to performe divine service.

[5]

Keepe thy teares, Reader, & that softer sorrow for in thy good Parent’s, or true Kinseman’s Urne, Or some deare Greattnesse, where thou needst not borrow from the blacke Weed, to make thy outside mourne; Or for thy dearest frend, when he is lost; or thy fare dearer Love, when that is Crost.

[10]

And had there some such kindly subject now led forth my Verse with overflowing vayne, I would have layd thee rich teares downe, & thou with flowing eyes shouldst have payd me againe: [15] But know my Muse (else twere not valuable) may it be unable must not be now so calmely miserable. Nay sure if thou, when thou art entred in, shalt place these Lynes, that they distracted goe, Thou dost not know how horrible a sin tis for thee to know this, & not be so. Thou dost Blaspheme my Subject, if thy soule be not as confusd as the Act was foule. Not more lamented for so hard a fate, not honour’d more for so divine a state, nor with less Gall, not with more innocence, not with a milder heart or calmer sence falls the white Lambe, and his his owne goare blest sighes a poore soule into the Levittes Breast And fainting with still throbbs & simple eyes, condemns th’unkindnesse, wondring why it dyes, while the pale multitude with horror stand

[20]

[25]

in her [30] multitudes

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Single Manuscripts astonish’d at so hard a heart & hand, and, overpassionate, shrinke from the good which they are there to challenge from that bloud. [35] are there for Yet is there nothing in that more precize, or of ites owne, or of a Sacrifice, then thou, good Scott, didst act out, whether we consider our selves pitying, or thee; Thee freshly bleeding at the Temple dore, [40] which nere could deny thee entrance before: denyde First to Arion should glad Thetis frye forbid the Sea, & bid him learne to fly; first should the dancing hill & wanton playne turn chanting Orpheus backe to hell agayne; [45] Or heaven keep out Apollo’s Harpe, new strung, he singing to it an immortall song; Ere any Belgicke Quire should once deny thee free Accesse, even to Supremacy. Nor was this undeservd, for thy wise pen [50] like Circe’s wand, had turnd them backe to men; Thou gav’st their wars a cause, their councell eyes, before none knew them Just, none knew them wise That was their Justice first, that was their witt, When the glad Land mainteynd thee, & thou it. [55] And even then the longing Audience stood like halfe stervd soules, pining for Angells food: wayting where while the Prologue Psalme was singing ore, there was no Eye but lookd toward the Dore, and with a weary sight calld out for thee; [60] look where yet not seeing what they pind to see, some would be gone, some stayd & slept while some tho: had dreamd already of another come; dreamt Some vexd & stampd, some lookd pale & sate still some swouning, as a presage of the Ill [65] gave Love brought in Jealousy, love brought in feare, and it was Sicknesse not to see thee there. When, beyond feare or faith, staunge newes was come of their lost care & thy foule Martirdome. Fill’d with a cloud of dullnesse, a thicke Night, [70] grosser then all the enemyes of light; Wise onely to find out secrettes oregrowne of curious woes, & make them all his owne; be that dead Brayne, that perishd memory that askes me to rehearse how thou didst dye. [75] It tryes the loosenesse of all prose, what Verse can keepe his boundes then, & that Masse rehearse?

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That masse, which doth such prodigyes unfould, as hard to tell, as once to be foretold. At whose bare thought, the Dayes that are behind [80] shall looke backe, blushing at our monstrous kind; and angry Grandams keepe their Nephewes stilld with naming but that fiend which thee hath killd. Yet could I well forgive that bonest Sott that heares this told him, & beleives it not, [85] That will not lett such a confusion sinke into his Brayne, since even the wise may thinke might Wonders so rude cannot hold possibly, could not And sure t’would prove a discreet Charity, were after times herein expurgatory; [90] least Paricide grow shamelesse at our story. for that a soldyer should attempt his end who was in such a Sympathy, their frend, so free, so bold, that such should spill that bloud which, with his Inke he wasted for our good; [100] for greedy studyes drinke it up and he was in that kind, as prodigall as we: We outcast Unthriftes, whom our mothers soyle hath exposd her to be a Trebble spoyle; toyle This makes my troubled & uneasy Verse [105] with flaggy winges hover about that Herse, and like Nightes Tunelesse Bird, thus yell it out, Darkenesse & shame covering her round about. I tell thee soldyer, what soere thou art, though grey, though Officd, though for thy owne part [110] thine all Europe knowes thee, though at Eighty Eight thou were twice drench’d, & yet scap’dst by pure sleight & halfe an Oare, though thou the first hadst bene om. at Cales, when haughty Essex tooke it in; Though thou hadst bene with them at Portugall, [115] though thou hadst servd in Ireland France & all the Hot Low Countrey services; to these add all Drakes Voyages ore all the Seas; yet with a higher constancy hath he adventurd more then thou hast, and for thee. [120] for thee he oft incurr’d the wrath of those that oretop thee, when thou orecropp’t thy foes. for thee he brav’d those mighty Ones, whom thou thinkst that they will tread on thee; and should now One of them kicke thee ore his grave, that stone [125] would sooner take thy part, then thou thine owne.

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The Inns of Court and London of Rome & Spayne, the powerfull Jesuites. That, that alone, out of a Soldyer, framd thee a sacriledgious murtherer; so must Ignatius double Calling be after long slumber, new revivd by thee. Thou couldst well feigne an Apparition so to Cloake the right cause why this was done; well couldst thou slander heaven, and as well putt a false writt of practice upon Hell. Hadst thou but falsifyed thy Nation (but sins are throughly trecherous when done) thou hadst bene a lesse horrid Villayne then, and lesse shame to thy blushing Countrymen. Yet though thou with that name hadst done this fact, tis but a personall, not native Act. When upon Towton field & Bosworth Playne so many Thousands lay on each side slayne, that spake us stout & bloudy, but not thus thus sacriledgiously murtherous; for he is fitt for homicide alone not that is able to shed bloud, but prone. Returne backe then, returne backe to thy father thy frend, thy councellor (if not Lord rather) what ere he be, return him backe againe this mischiefe, sent or brought from Rome or Spayne. for such we owe to forreigners, to those that nere could doe us hurt but at the Close. While we kept off, we were our owne, & good, but the embrace infectes our catching blood Even so pure Ayre blasted with Dragons breath, of meanes for health, becomes the cause of Death; and foolish Maydes, in wiser Age, defye the Druggistes helpe, & ban his Mercury. forgive me, you faire Muses, which I know with such an ease, so willing goodnesse flow ore the same Herse, that every melting soule fayntes at your songes, and, too weake to controule the passion raysd by such a power as theirs, yields, & payes Tribute with perpetuall teares. forgive me, if my Lines grow sometimes mad, not allwayes soft, not allwayes sweetly sad; for where the thoughtes divided lye betwixt sorrow & rage, the passion wilbe mixt. So lost Andromache, (that had before seene him Tryumphing on the Troyan shore,

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The Inns of Court and London on others Backes, not onely the Lordes owne. Now all the wronges of a proud Age affoord Tenants no greater Torture then their Lord; None shewes in Servantes, or free house expence, others love or his own magnificence: Onely the keeping of a Beardlesse Chinne is the great Charity, if not the sin. And thou dull Belgian though short of witt, (at least such that we should be lost in it) yet prov’st, like all that are of earthly mould too subtle for’s, & cheat’st us for our gold. But this Infectes not, nor for this, could we say, that our Nation were defild by thee. Yet, least thy neerenesse should not hurt, like theirs, thou hurt’st us more, and dost corrupt our prayers. Not long agoe, when we together mett to serve our God at times & places sett, Our free Devotion fairely did begin with general Confession of sin; Our prayers were short & many and the more to strengthen them, we monthly read quite ore those powerful songes, that who so wantes a prayer, and shall for phrase or spirit else where repayre; eyther he must Confesse that his desires are fond & private, and’s wordes stirring fires, or the dead soule conceives not in what sence th’Allmighty loves a Suite of violence. Th’unlettred Layman heard to his content, God himself speake from eyther Testament; we heard him speak with reverence, and we gave up our Orisons with bended knee; T’was our best pride to stand up to the Creed, as those that would maintayne it, if’t were need. We heard the Decalogue, where we Confessd, & askd loud pardon that we had transgressd; Thus blessd thus strengthend, we our Preachers heard whether he had, or he had not, a Beard; And as the glorious name of Jesus flew from his blessd lipps, we tooke where was more due, a reverent notice of it, that thereby many a heart, many a wandring eye returnd backe to his Master, and such state gave us a Care to heare, him to relate. Now since at Amsterdam it doth not please the foggy Hollander to break his ease,

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The Inns of Court and London and wonder at the power that leades thee forth. Thy Crosse both Indyes shall with Awe gaze on, and by it forc’d, adore a brighter Sun; At that shall Spayne to know her Boundes begin, and shrinking Ottoman draw himselfe in; A certayner forerunner shall not be to Seas of stormes, to Landes of misery; That the learn’d Chaldee shall prophane his Spheare, to place that crosse above all Planettes there. Even these forgetfull thankelesse countrey’s then shall teach their Chronicles a juster pen; These that now study to deface our Actes, that tread our name out, and translate our factes into their owne; and now in more will know what help they may need, or, for what they owe. Nor doubt I that such English Villaynes were, though made here and sent hence, yet growne worse there67 And that, poore Scott, thy wise though cruell fate did to thy Tragedy proportionate thy Scene, and willd thou shouldst be murther’d there where no good is, or all dyes that comes neere. for in this place, and but in this, we see our English Gentry, that hath usd to be so peerelesse for high mindes, so ^now^ lost in new degenerate wayes, such as their Syres nere knew. When England was alone, and did Command in her owne wars, by her owne head, & hand, The bloudy Crosse stooping her awfull Crest to none but him that bare it on his Breast; No Gaule swayd then, nor did a French borne swayne lead our Troupes bloodless off & on againe. Then English Talbott had a dreadfull fame, and twas all France that Trembled at that name. The Spanyard then, perceiving one too hott or too sad for him, could not goe & plott how he might have his head sent him, or thinke to have him starvd or poysond in his drinke. but quite despayring of all sleightes of State, he was content to yield to his just fate. Then quak’d he at our Drake, when he did heare it, and from the Cradle taught the Babe to feare it. And then twas, Officers & soldyers were like to good fathers and good Children deare, trusty & soft t’each other; they livd then

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The Inns of Court and London leave we asleepe by thee, unknowne, unscannd, till Juster time find some more happy hand that may disolve this knott, since yet none can, as Alexander did the Gordian.

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Notes 1 See Wilfrid R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth I and the Early Stuarts, 1590–1640 (London: Longman, 1972), and Philip J. Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple: An Elizabethan Dramatist in His Social Setting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), 3–80. See Chapter 7 of this study for a discussion of Inns of Court verse and its circulation. 2 See Michelle O’Callaghan, The English Wits: Literature and Sociability in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 10–101. Focusing on the 1590s and early Jacobean period, Mark Bland, “Francis Beaumont’s Verse Letters to Ben Jonson and ‘The Mermaid Club,’” English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700 12 (2005): 138–79, discusses connections between Inns of Court figures, the earl of Essex’s followers, literary coteries surrounding the countesses of Rutland and Bedford, and those politically and literarily active men associated with the Mitre and Mermaid Taverns—a group he calls a “moveable feast” (169). 3 I discuss John Donne’s functioning within this environment in John Donne, Coterie Poet (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 25–95. 4 See, for example, the following: Manchester, Chetham’s Library Mun. A.4.150 (the Farmer-Chetham MS); Ros. MS 1083/16; Bod. MSS Add. B.97 (kept by Leweston Fitzjames at Oxford, then Middle Temple), Don. c.54 (kept by Richard Roberts, member of legal community in London), and Eng. Poet. e.14; and BL MSS Add. 25303 and 21433, Sloane 1446 (compiled by Francis Baskerville both at Oxford and the Inns; see Chapter 9 for a discussion of this last manuscript). 5 Peter Beal, Index of English Literary Manuscripts, 2 vols. (London: Mansell, 1980–93), 2.2.326. Beal states this scribe copied the Worcester College, Oxford manuscript of George Chapman’s May Day. Though the manuscript is a scribal product, it does not appear to be one text of many emanating from a center of scribal publication. If it were, it would not, I believe, contain so many rare or unique poems. Henry Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts 1558–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 143, dates the transcription to the 1630s and identifies the hand as that of an anonymous scribe who also “wrote the manuscript of the play attributed to Thomas Heywood Dick of Devonshire” and who “supplied leaves to complete copies of dramatic texts already in print.” 6 Chute also had, for a time, a residence in Holborn, along with his chambers in the Middle Temple. He was appointed Justice of the Peace for Middlesex (1638) and for Westminster (1640). He was asked to be defense counsel for the Earl of Strafford and Archbishop Laud when they were tried by the Long Parliament and he defended the bishops as well before the House of Lords. He prospered in his legal practice and, in 1648, bought a Hampshire estate that remained in the family for 300 years, The Vyne. He died in 1659. I rely for the details of Chute’s life on Christopher Brooks’s biography in the ODNB http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5412 (accessed 13 August 2009).

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7 See Mary Hobbs, Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1992), 93–97, for a discussion of manuscripts in “the legal tradition.” 8 For a discussion of Shirley’s connections through Gray’s Inn, see Sandra A. Burner, James Shirley: A Study of Literary Coteries and Patronage in Seventeenth-Century England (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), 41–84. 9 Margaret Crum (comp.), First-Line Index of English Poetry 1500–1800 in Manuscripts of the Bodleian. Library Oxford, 2 vols. (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1969), F385, cites two Bodleian manuscripts of the poem—Ash. 47, f. 47v and Douce f.5, f. 20. Other copies are found in Folger MSS V.a.97, p. 26, V.a.170, p. 168, V.a.262, p. 21, and V.a.345, p. 131, and BL MSS Add. 30982, f. 13v and Sloane 1792, f. 45 as well as in Ros. MS 239/27, p. 423. It appears in two printed collections: Wit Restor’d (1658), 128, and Female poems on several occasions (1679), 151. 10 If the manuscript was compiled and transcribed after Donne’s poems had been printed in 1633, this is not surprising, though many manuscripts created after 1633 continued to include poems by him. 11 Ros. MS 239/127, p. 130b. The characters are from Lodge’s Rosalynd, but the poem is not found in Lodge’s work. It looks like a more recent piece beased on Lodge’s characters. It is a seduction dialog, resembling, for example, the situation of some of the songs in Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella. Another collector, John Ramsey, in Bod. MS Douce 280, uses the name “Montanus” as a literary persona. 12 See Folger MS V.a.339, f. 223v, and altered versions in Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 117, f. 182 and Eng. Poet. e.14, f. 67v. The printed books in which it is found are: Witts Recreations (1645), sig. T8; The Harmony of the Muses (1654), 72–74, which begins with a poem “On the Choice of a Mistris” (“When I do love, my Mistris must be fair” [1]) and also has another poem with the same title, beginning “Her for a Mistris faine would I enjoy” (8) as well as a version of this poem (72–74); Le prince d’amour (1660), 124-25 (with the author identified as “J. G.”); Poems written … by William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and … Benjamin Ruddier (1660), pp. 79–81, which has, until the end, four-line, rather than eight-line stanzas, lacks one of the stanzas in the version in the Chute manuscript and has a final eight-line stanza that is shared only with the version in The Harmony of the Muses. 13 These poems are given the headings “Herrickes farewell to Sacke” and “The time of his Vow expir’d, he thus welcomes it againe.” 14 Beal says this attribution is spurious. Other copies of the poem appear in Bod. MSS Eng. Poet. e.14, f. 19v, Rawl. Poet. 153, f. 12 and 160, f. 156v, and BL MS Add. 22603, f. 38v. Chute’s collection contains a love poem by another Oxford divine, Peter Heylyn, “In prayse of a Mistris” (“When flora payntes flowers, she chose” [f. 15r-v]). This is also found in BL MSS Add. 46885A, ff. 25v–26v (titled “To my dearest Mistresse, on her unequalled selfe”), and Egerton 2725, ff. 95v–96v. 15 I reproduce this poem in Chapter 8. 16 In the manuscript this poem is attributed to Nicholas Oldisworth. 17 Another Christ Church poet, George Morley, has a piece in this compilation, “Upon drinking in the Crowne of a Hatt” (“Well fare those Three that when there was a Dearth” [f. 71r-v]). For a discussion of the intra- and extrauniversity dissemination of verse written at Oxford, see Chapter 7. 18 This popular poem survives in seven manuscript and six seventeenthcentury print versions. See the Folger Union Index https://firstlines.folger.

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edu/advancedSearch.php?val1=to+London+town&col1=firstline#results (accessed 30 March 2020). The presence of this poem suggests a connection with the London literary circles surrounding Henry King. See the short biography of Anne King by Vivienne Larminie in ODNB http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/68071 (accessed 13 August 2009). See The Stoughton Manuscript: A Manuscript Miscellany of Poems by Henry King and his Circle, circa 1636, A facsimile edition with introduction and indexes by Mary Hobbs (Aldershot, U.K. and Brookfield, VT: Scolar Press, 1990), 83 and 269. John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Kate Bennett, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 1.336. See ODNB http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2687 (accessed 13 August 2009). This poem also appears in BL MS Add. 22582, f. 19. Beal writes: Shirley’s poems did not for the most part circulate very widely in manuscript before he published them in 1646, although contemporary copies of a few particular poems can be found, some of them set to music. Perhaps the chief area in which some of his poems may have been passed around is the Inns of Court, where Shirley resided from about 1624 (he ‘lived in Greys-inn, and set up for a play-maker’, Anthony Wood noted), becoming an honorary member of Gray’s Inn after the success of his Inns of Court masque The Triumph of Peace in 1634. There is a likely Inns of Court association for the “Chute MS” (British Library, Add. MS 33998), a professional verse anthology, including fourteen poems by Shirley, which was copied by a scribe who apparently also did work for the playhouse. The same general circle would probably account for many of the surviving manuscript song-versions. (https://celmms.org.uk/introductions/ShirleyJames.html [accessed 27 April 2020]).

For connections between the Inns’ residents and the theater, see Michael Neil, “‘Wits most accomplished Senate’: The Audience of the Caroline Private Theaters,” Studies in English Literature 18 (1978): 341–60. 25 Hyde had been a member of the Middle Temple, having been raised to the bench in 1617 and later appointed Chief Justice in 1627, largely because of his legal assistance to the Duke of Buckingham when the Duke was impeached. See the biographical entry for him in the ODNB http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/14333 (accessed 13 August 2009). Hyde had served in several parliaments from 1597 on, and had a reputation for oppositional politics, for example in arguing, in 1610, against the “great contract” proposed by King James to unify Scotland and England. 26 The OED defines “procedendo” as “A writ authorizing or requiring a subordinate court to resume the hearing of a case after it has been suspended, either when the suspension was wrongful (or the reasons for it have ceased to obtain), or when the proceedings had been removed to a superior court but the case has been remanded by that court to the original court.” 27 This poem also appears in Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 160, f. 182v. Prest, 157, describes the social affiliations of Hyde in the Inns of Court environment: “… Edward Hyde’s acquaintance ‘whilst he was only a student of the law, and stood at gaze, and irresolute of what course of life he should take,’ included Ben Jonson, Thomas Carew, Charles Cotton, Sir Kenelm Digby, Thomas May, John Vaughan, John Selden, William Davenant and Bulstrode

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Whitelocke. All these, except Digby, had some sort of personal connection with the inns, but their relationship was mediated by common interests rather than institutional affiliations.” See Terence Spencer (ed.), A Book of Masques, in Honour of Allardyce Nicoll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 277–313. For a discussion of the political indeterminacy of the masque and of its engagement with contemporary political tensions, see Lawrence Venuti, “The Politics of Allusion: The Gentry and Shirley’s The Triumph of Peace,” ELR 16 (1986): 182–205. There is another copy of this poem in Ros. MS 232/14, p. 46. See The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, ed. J. Max Patrick (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday & Co., 1963), 554, who claims, following earlier scholars, that the poem was printed as “An Epitaph on Himselfe” in Thomas Jordan’s Claraphil and Clarinda (1650) and in that writer’s A Nursery of Novelties (1665). Although I find it in the latter, I do not see it in the former. This was printed in Hesperides (1648). See Beal, Index, 2.1.556. The Poems of Thomas Carew, ed. Rhodes Dunlap (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), 286, identifies this as Decade vi, Sonnet iii from Henry Constable’s Diana. See Poems of Carew, ed. Dunlap, xviii–ix. This piece is found in University of Leeds, Brotherton MS Lt q 46, f. 20 and Bod. MS Ash. 38, p. 61 and in Witts Recreations (1640), sig. L7v and four other printed books. This poem appears in Folger MSS V.b.43, f. 26 and V.a.103.1, f. 54v. This poem appears in eight other manuscripts. See the Folger Index https://firstlines.folger.edu/advancedSearch.php?val1=once+blessed+with +the+sight&col1=firstline#results (accessed 30 March 2020). Mary Hobbs has discussed this group in Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, passim and in her edition of The Stoughton Manuscript. There seems to be a word missing after “restless.” The Folger Index https://firstlines.folger.edu/advancedSearch.php?val1=lame +in+her+foot&col1=title#results (accessed 30 March 202) identifies this as a piece by Francis Atkins, “Upon the same [Mrs. E. S.] being lame in her foot” (Folger MS V.a.97, p. 55). For a useful discussion of this topic, see G. R. Waggoner, “Timon of Athens and the Jacobean Duel,” Shakespeare Quarterly 16.4 (Autumn 1965): 303–11. Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 50–61 and 105–15, discusses musical manuscripts and the social circles associated with them. This is attributed to Francis Beaumont in another manuscript; see Crum, Index, L 424. This poem (with “scarce apt” instead of “unfit” in the first line) appears in two related Inns-of-Court manuscripts, BL MSS 21433, f. 91, and 25303, f. 99, as well as in Folger MS V.a.262, p. 22, and Ros. MS 1083/17, p. 102v. This appears in one other manuscript, Ros. MS 243/4, p. 11. The OED has both innocent and pejorative definitions of this term: “1.a A person beloved by one of the opposite sex; a lover or sweetheart; †occasionally a husband or wife. 2. In bad sense … : One who is loved unlawfully; an unlawful lover or mistress. In later archaistic use chiefly applied to the female sex.” See the examples in Gustav Ungerer, “The Viol da Gamba as a Sexual Metaphor in Elizabethan Music and Literature,” Renaissance and Reformation/ Renaissance et Réforme n.s. 8.2 (May 1984): 79–90. The Folger Index lists no other manuscript containing this poem. Peter Beal, however, has informed me that the poem is found in Ros. MS 1083/17, ff. 143v-45.

The Inns of Court and London 103 46 Other elegies and epitaphs in Chute’s collection, most serious and some comic, include: (Jonson’s) “Epitaph on Mrs Boulstred” (“Stay, view this stone, & if thou be not such” [f. 33-v]); “Epitaph on the most faire & vertuous Lady, E: S” (“If, to mayteyne [sic] the use, I must” [fol 34v]); “An Epitaph on Two Infantes buryed together” (“Awake not us, here layd to sleepe” [f. 36r-v]); “Aretine’s Epitaph” (“Here biting Aretine lyes buryed” [f. 36v]); “An Elegy on Mrs Sara Manwayring” (“Tell me, if thou canst not weepe” [f. 40r-v]) and “In Eandem” (“Stay & read, In this Earths span” [f. 40v]); “Epitaph on Mr Ayre” (“Under this stone of Marble faire” [f. 88v]); “Epitaph on Sir John Spencer” (“Here lyes Sir John Spencer, like Dives, in ground” [ff. 40v-41]); “Epitaph on William Cole, Alehouse keeper at Cotton neere Cambridge” (“Doth William Cole lye here? henceforth be stale” [f. 41]); “Epitaph on Francis Beaumont” (“He that hath such Acutenesse & such witt” [f. 41]); and “On the Death of Mr Francis Lancaster” (“To dye in natures Debt, and when” [f. 89v]). 47 The only other copy of this poem appears to be in Ros. MS 1083/17, f. 145v. 48 Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 4 as well as in eighteen other manuscripts. It was printed in The Harmony of the Muses (1654) as “A Maids Denyall” (49), and Sportive Wit (1656). See Laurence Cummings, “John Finet’s Miscellany” (PhD Diss., Washington University, 1960), 109, and my discussion of the poem in Manuscript, 77–78. 49 The merkin, according to Amanda Barrow in The Oxford Companion to the Body, ed. Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 568–69, “was used as a device to cover syphilitic pustules and gonorrhoeal warts in the genital area … Merkins were frequently connected with prostitutes.” 50 The first is found also in Bod. MSS Eng. Poet. f. 10, f. 118; Rawl. Poet. 26, f. 11v; and Ros. MS 239/22, p. 60. The second appears in Bod. MSS Rawl. D.859, f. 131, Ash. 36, f. 170, and Ash. 38, f. 240v, as well as Harv. MS Eng. 703, f. 41. 51 This is a reference to the Duke of Anjou, Queen Elizabeth’s last serious suitor, whose efforts were finally unsuccessful in the early 1580s. 52 The first piece also appears in Bod. MS Ash. 47, f. 77; the second is apparently unique. See the biography of Chichester in ODNB http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/5274 (accessed 13 August 2009). 53 This poem is included in ESL, Mi5 and discussed by Andrew McRae in Literature, Satire and the Early Stuart State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 38–40. 54 See Thomas Cogswell, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621–1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 55 See the short biography of Scott by Sean Kelsey in ODNB http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/24916 (accessed 13 August 2009). 56 In a pamphlet issued two years later, A Briefe and True Relation of the Murther of Thomas Scott Preacher of Gods Word and Bachelor of Divinitie (1628), Lambert’s mental illness is clearly emphasized and the Catholic conspiracy theory rejected. Lambert’s own claim that he believed he was commanded by spirits to kill Scott because he had hindered his preferment with the Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (whom he believed to be embody the spirit of Queen Elizabeth) is foregrounded as his motive. Under torture, Lambert insisted “hee was not set on, nor hired, by any Priest, Jesuit or other whatsoever” (5). 57 P. G. Lake, “Constitutional Consensus and Puritan Opposition in the 1620s: Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match,” The Historical Journal 25 (1982): 805–25.

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58 Vox Populi, or Newes from Spayne (1620), sig. B2. Subsequent citations are inserted in the text. 59 See ESL, I17 for a list of twenty-five manuscripts containing this piece. McRae and Bellany, who present the text found in Chute’s collection, note that the poem is attributed to “Mr Cicill” in Yale MS Osb. b.197, to “A.B.” in National Library of Scotland MS 2060, to “Captaine Kinge” (Samuel King) in Bod. MS Eng. hist. c.272, and to John Hoskins in Wiltshire County Record Office MS 865/500. The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh: An Historical Edition, ed. Michael Rudick (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies and the Renaissance English Text Society, 1999), 193, prints the poem and notes that it is ascribed to John Gill in a modern annotation in Ros. MS 239/27. 60 In other manuscript versions and in that found in Shirley’s biography, two additional lines follow this one: Else what a Miracle were wrought To triumph both in Flesh and Thought. (Shirley, 239) 61 Shirley, 241–42. 62 See ESL, I12. McRae and Bellany claim this is the only other surviving manuscript copy and they reproduce the poem from Chute’s anthology. Poems of Ralegh, ed. Rudick, 198, uses the Bodleian version as the copy text. 63 Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50, f. 31v, has the hypermetrical “cosens” for “Cheates.” 64 R. North, The life of the right honourable Francis North, baron of Guilford (London, 1742), 13. I am indebted to Christopher Brooks’s ODNB biography of Chute for this reference http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/ 5412 (accessed 13 August 2009). 65 A pun. “Corner” is a slang term for vagina, as in Othello’s “keep a corner in a thing I love / For others’ uses” (Othello 3.2.272-73). 66 The OED defines “train-scent” as “An object dragged along the ground to make a scent for hounds to follow (= train n.25a); a chase using such an object; a drag.” 67 The three variants here are “there,” “thence” and “here.”

4

Neighborhood, Social Networks, and the Making of a Gentry Family’s Manuscript Poetry Collection: British Library MS Additional 25707

With an estate in Cotes, Leicestershire, where the family had social contacts with the Earl and Countess of Huntington, the Beaumonts of Grace Dieu, Thomas Pestell, and John Donne’s close friend Sir Henry Goodyer (whose Polesworth estate was in nearby Warwickshire), Sir William Skipwith and his son Henry, who was knighted in 1609 and later lived at Prestwold,1 compiled poems in manuscript over several decades, many of which reflect their own political and social lives and connections.2 The resulting manu­ script collection, comprising five separate collections in twenty-three gath­ erings (plus some tipped-in loose sheets), BL MS Add. 25707, has been studied closely by textual editors because it contains a relatively early col­ lection of sixty of John Donne’s poems.3 But the whole anthology of verse is interesting in its own right—first, like the Tudor Arundel Harington manuscript, as a family collection and, second, as a document that bears the marks of neighborhood and social networks. This manuscript also sheds light on the wider sphere of the socioliterary transmission of poetic texts in the period and the relationships of various authors represented in the an­ thology. Its contents include compiler poetry done by Sir William and his son—verse reproducing the style, themes, and topical concerns of the period. In addition to setting this collection in its social and geographical contexts, this chapter examines some of the interesting material features of this composite manuscript, treating it as a particularly interesting example of the personal anthologizing of poetry in the period.

Sir William Skipwith in His Different Environments Sir William Skipwith lived from around 1564 to 1610 and his son Sir Henry from 1589 to 1658. Sir William was born in Leicestershire, where his father, from an old gentry family based in Lincolnshire, had purchased the manor of Cotes.4 He went to Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1580, served as a soldier with the Earl of Leicester in the Low Countries in 1586, but returned to his family’s estate after his father’s death in 1588, be­ coming active in local politics. He had local political appointments: to the

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county bench in 1592, to the office of sheriff in 1597–98, and to the commission dealing with the midland revolt of 1607. He hosted Queen Anne and Prince Henry in Leicester on their move south from Scotland in June of 1603. Richard Cust points out that Skipwith’s role in Leicestershire politics was largely determined by his ambiguous relationship with the Hastings family, which domi­ nated the local scene. During the late 1590s he was said to be “out of friendship” with the fourth Earl of Huntington, the head of the family … and this probably cost him a seat for the county in the parliament of 1597. By 1601 he had to some extent been reconciled with the family and his election for the county that year was probably with Huntington’s blessing … Skipwith was on much friendlier terms with George’s grandson Henry, who succeeded to the earldom in 1605; however, in local politics he continued to take an independent line … [and] Huntington never promoted him to the prestigious local office of deputy lieutenant. James Knowles notes that Skipwith’s townhouse in Leicester, which was rented from the Earl of Huntington, was adjacent to that of the Hastings family and that Skipwith served as Sheriff while the earl was Lord Lieutenant.5 Skipwith’s service in the Parliaments of 1601 and 1604–10 would have put him in an environment in London in contact with an intellectual and political elite, many of whom wrote verse. Skipwith himself had a reputation as a “wit” who composed, in Thomas Fuller’s words, “fit and acute epigrams, poesies, mottos and devices … chiefly … impresses neither so apparent that every rustic might understand them nor so obscure that they needed an Oedipus to interpret them.”6

The Sections of the Collection and Its Scribal Hands Because it combines separate booklets and material was entered over an extended period, often on blank pages and in other available spaces, the Skipwith manuscript has a complex structure, if not a frustratingly scrambled arrangement. Nevertheless, one can identify ten major groupings of material in the manuscript: 1. After some few pieces at the start of the manuscript transcribed by Hand A, which is responsible not only for a large, later section of the manuscript but also for inserting many pieces in available spaces throughout (including the margins),7 there is an initial group of poems by John Donne on ff. 8–39v in a hand I identify as Hand C. This includes a run of eleven elegies on ff. 8–14v, preceded by a later scribe’s (Hand B) inclusion of Elegy 1 (“The Bracelet”) on ff. 5v–6v and yet another scribe’s insertion of the bawdy “Elegye of loves

British Library MS Additional 25707 107 progresse” on ff. 27–28. This Donne collection also includes twentyone of the Songs and Sonnets, an additional elegy (“The Autumnal” [f. 22v]), three verse letters—one to the Countess of Bedford (“That I might make your Cabinet my tombe” [f. 17v]), a second to Magdalen Herbert (“Mad paper stay, & grudge not hear to burne” [21v–22]), and a third to Sir Henry Goodyer (“who makes the past his patterne for next yeare” [f. 23r-v])—and “An Elegye vpon the death of the Ladye Markham” (“Man is the world, and death the Ocean” [f. 29r-v]).8 In Hand D, there is a poem by Nicholas Hare inserted between two Donne poems in the same hand, “O frutefull garden, and yet never tilde” (f. 34v), an unusual Marian piece full of Catholic terminology and attitudes.9 One of Donne’s divine poems is included in this section, “Mr. J. Dunn goeinge from Sr H.G.: on good fryday sent him back this Meditacionn, on the waye” (f. 36r-v)—a piece whose title notes his departure from Sir Henry Goodyer’s house.

Figure 4.1 Hand A: Excerpt from transcription of John Donne’s “The Extasye,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 57. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

Figure 4.2 Hand B: Excerpt from John Donne’s “Elegia I,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 5v. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

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Figure 4.3 Hand C: Excerpt from John Donne’s “Elegya 2,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 8. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

Figure 4.4 Hand D: Excerpt from John Donne’s “An Elegye upon the death of the Ladye Markham,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 29. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

Following four Donne lyrics, there is a strange poem “To my Lo[rd] of Penbrooke” with the same subscription used for Donne’s poems in this manuscript (“Fye, Fye you sonnes of Pallas what madd rage” [f. 34]), which stylistically reads like Donne’s, perhaps part of a relationship of poetic exchange between Donne and Pembroke. It is followed by another, apparently unique, poem also subscribed “J.D.,” “Of La[dy]: in the/black masque” (“Why chose shee black; was it that in whitenes” [f. 34r-v]).10 This piece was obviously written to someone who participated in the performance of Ben Jonson’s 1605 The Masque of Blackness: Donne’s patroness, Lucy, Countess of Bedford is a good candidate. Donne may not have written this, but his friend Goodyer may have and the poem, like others not in the accepted canon of Donne’s works, was inserted in a run of his poems in the source copied by the scribe of this part of the Skipwith manuscript. Interestingly, there follows a poem by Sir Henry Wotton, “How happie is hee borne or taught” (f. 34v), which precedes Donne’s “Epithalamion at the Mariage of the Princess Elyzabeth, and the Palzgrave celebrated on St. Valentine’s daye” (ff. 35r-v), a

British Library MS Additional 25707 109 poem separated by only two folios from Goodyer’s own epithalamion on the royal marriage, which precedes the last (untitled) Donne lyric in this section of the manuscript, “Twicknam Garden” (f. 38v). 2 There is a second group of Donne poems on ff. 48–53: Hand D has transcribed the five satires and the two verse letters that often accompanied them in manuscript circulation, “The Storme” and “The Calme” (ff. 48–53). Then Hand A inserted two poems “Where is that hot [sic] firre which verse is sayde” (“Sappho to Philaenis”)11 and “The Extasye” on ff. 56v–57v. This is followed by a return to Hand D on f. 58 with the poem ascribed to Sir Walter Ralegh, “Beware (faire Maydes) of Muskie Courtiers oathes.” In this section, Henry Skipwith might have been transcribing Donne poems missed in the first series of Donne poems in the manuscript. 3 Hand B resumed the Donne transcriptions on f. 60, in a section headed “Letters” (i.e., verse letters), starting with Donne’s epistle to Wotton, “Sir more than kisses, Letters mingle soules.” This piece is followed by another poem ascribed to Donne, “Why should not Pillgrymes to thy bodie come” (f. 60v), a text attributed to Francis Beaumont in two Bodleian manuscripts.12 Next are two more of Donne’s Songs and Sonnets (“Goe & catch, a falling Starr” [f. 61] and “Send home my long strayd eyes to mee” [f. 61]), his religious poem “The Crosse” [ff. 61v–62], two more Beaumont poems, in addition to a filler poem at bottom of f. 63 in Hand A, then, in a text that corresponds to that of the 1633 edition of Donne’s Poems, a copy of the prose letter Donne sent to the Countess of Bedford, accompanying the elegy he wrote about her deceased brother.13 The next poem associated with Donne, transcribed in a different hand (Hand E) is the dubiously attributed love elegy, “At hir departure” (“Since shee must goe & I must mourne, come nighte” [f. 65]).

Figure 4.5 Hand E: Excerpt from poem dubiously attributed to John Donne, “Since shee muste goe & I must mourne, come night,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 65. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

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Figure 4.6 Hand F: Excerpt from poem to Thomas Pestell subscribed “E.C,” “The hand that mov’d thee (Pestell) thus to pound,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 70. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

4 The next distinct section has a transcription of a long poem by the Skipwiths’ neighbor, Sir John Beaumont, “Bosworth Fields” (ff. 82–89). This was transcribed by a new hand (Hand G), who wrote the title in elaborate calligraphy.

Figure 4.7 Hand G: Excerpt from “To the Famous St. of blessed memorye Elizabeth, the humble peticion of her now wretched, and Contemptible, the Comons of England,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 76. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

5 There is a run of poems in Hand A on ff. 92–110v, including pieces by Henry King, Thomas Carew, Sir Thomas Cary,14 Sir Robert Ayton, Owen Felltham, Dudley North, Zouch Townley, Henry Reynolds, and Robert Herrick. If we put these poems together with the pieces Hand A entered in available spaces throughout the rest of the manuscript, we have a large anthology of verse that has some main distinctive features. First, it contains some pieces that are found in the university collections compiled in the late

British Library MS Additional 25707 111

Figure 4.8 Hand H: Excerpt from an elegy, “On Kinge James,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 79. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

Figure 4.9 Hand J: Excerpt from a poem by “D. Foaks,” “If any have the grace at once to bee,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 91. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

Figure 4.10 Hand K: Excerpt from a poem attributed to Sir Thomas Aston, “A peecefull mind goes homely cladd,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 91. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

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Figure 4.11 Hand L: Excerpt from Richard Corbett’s poem “On the [death of] Queene [Anne],” “Noe not a quach (sad Poet) doubt yow,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 91v. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

Jacobean and early Caroline period (except, of course, for some older poems by Ralegh and Donne that continued to appear in such anthologies). We find poems by such additional authors as William Browne, William Strode, Henry Harington, Ben Jonson,15 Sir John Beaumont, Philip King, and Robert Ellice. Second, as Mary Hobbs has noted,16 there is a partiality to songs and to lyrics that had been set to music: many of the pieces can be found in such earlier or later printed collections as William Byrd’s Songs of Sundrie Natures (1589), Walter Porter’s Madrigals and Ayres (1632), Henry Lawes’s Ayres and Dialogues (1653) or in manuscript collections such as Bod. MS Mus. b.1 and Henry Lawes’s musical manuscript (BL MS Add. 53723). Third, there are poems written by authors who functioned in London urban environments, particularly that of the Inns of Court: Henry Blount, whose poetry appears in the Stoughton17 and related manuscripts, is represented by several pieces and other poems are also found in such Inns-of-Court collections as BL MSS Add. 25303 and the related Add. 21433.18 Fourth, there are some poems in this collection that probably circulated together—for example, a series of poems on various kinds of mistresses (ff. 104–10).19 It is interesting that several poems in this section overlap with clustered poems in two other manuscripts, University of Leeds Brotherton MS Lt q 44 and Ros. MS 239/23:

You railing poets blush, blush all that say Go my disdain and with a constant brow

Add. 25707

Lt q 44

f. 104

f. 38v

f. 104

f. 36v

Ros. 239/23

p. 170 (Continued)

British Library MS Additional 25707 113

Your servant lives but if you knew Can your greatness fair protect you Ever looking never ceasing You oft wish’d my fairest fair When thy servant is at leisure

Add. 25707

Lt q 44

f. 105

f. 40v

f. 105v f. 106 f. 107 f. 107v

Ros. 239/23

p. 158 f. 35 f. 39 f. 39v

p. 167 p. 160 p. 16220

6 On ff. 111–17, on paper that has been trimmed at the bottom and which, as a result, loses some lines of text, a new hand (Hand M) has transcribed Sir John Beaumont’s (unattributed) translation of Juvenal’s tenth satire—the section headed “Juvenal [Satire].” The verso of the last folio is blank.

Figure 4.12 Hand M: Excerpt from a translation of Juvenal’s tenth satire, “In all the Countryes which from Gades extend,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 111. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

7 After f. 118, on which there is only a short four-line poem and a deleted couplet, and a blank page (f. 118v), a page has been removed from the manuscript, before a transcription of one of Donne’s prose “Problems,” “why doe puritans make longest sermons” (f. 119). The verso of f. 119 is blank and ff. 120–32v constitute a new group of poems in a new secretary hand (Hand N), containing numerous epigrams, most of them by Sir John Harington. 8 Starting with a witty and courtly prose piece composed by Sir William Skipwith (discussed below), the next grouping has four poems by him transcribed on ff. 135–37v. In available blank space on f. 133 a late rounded hand has transcribed what appears to be a unique copy of a short, eccentrically spelled, epitaph (“Reder stand back dull not this marbell shrine”).

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Figure 4.13 Hand N: Excerpt from Sir John Harington’s epigram, “Against Momum for carpinge,” “Scant had I writt xii Lines but I had newes,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 120. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

9 Folios 138–47v contain copies of prose letters by Sir Walter Ralegh (2), Francis Phillips, King Charles, and Lady Rich (interrupted by a blank page, f. 141v), as well as a loose sheet folded in four that was trimmed to fit the bound book, losing some of the text, a prose oration by “W. Wartin” made to King James on his arrival in London (ff. 142–33). 10 A large section, running from f. 148 to the last transcription on f. 186 (f. 186v being a blank page), contains a new run of poems written in alternating professional italic and hybrid secretary-italic scripts (Hands O and P).21 This part of the manuscript contains the largest number of poems by Sir William Skipwith and Henry Skipwith. It has also poems by Jonson, Carew, Ayton, King, Richard Corbett, Francis Beaumont, William Davenant, Aurelian Townsend, George Digby, and the Earl of Pembroke. Some of these pieces are from the early years of the century, including the poems by Sir William Skipwith, but others are from later decades: for example, “An Epitaph on Robert Munday who kept the bookinge alley and Ferry att Sawly who dy’d the 20th of June 1625 beinge Monday morneing” (“Monday is gone, how shall the weeke bee guided” [ff. 167v–68]), John Eliot’s poem about the 1628 assassination of the Duke of Buckingham (“Yett were Bidentalls sacred and the place” [ff. 160v–61]), “Mr Davenants Newyeeres guifte to King Charles 1631” (f. 158r–v), and an elegy for Leonard Digges (“Cann the dumbe accents of a vanisht breath” [ff. 163v–64v]) who died in 1635.22

The Collection and Its Leicestershire Connections The collection as a whole took shape in Leicestershire, where earlier materials gathered by Sir William Skipwith, probably in London, were

British Library MS Additional 25707 115 supplemented by verse composed by writers from the county and from other environments. One of the items found in one of the two sections of the manuscript containing poetry by Sir William is his witty prose piece, “A chancerye Bill” (f. 134), composed for the 1607 entertainment of Alice, Countess of Derby on her visit to Leicestershire, first to Ashby-dela-Zouch castle, the residence of her daughter and son-in-law, the Earl and Countess of Huntingdon, and then to Skipwith’s own house. James Knowles has related this piece by Skipwith to the social relations be­ tween the Skipwith and Hastings families and put it in the context of Skipwith’s interest in witty, mostly poetic, compositions. He says that the event involved a gift-giving ceremony at the formal betrothal of Anne Stanley, eldest daughter of Alice, Countess of Derby, and Grey Brydges, fifth Lord Chandos.23 Skipwith’s piece, which also appears in the col­ lection of texts from the Ashby entertainment in Hunt. MS EL 34 B9, reads as follows: A chancerye Bill Humbly complayninge sheweth unto your good Lordshipps your dayle Orator C C. That whereas divers & sundry Ladies & gentlewoemen have tumultuouslie gathered themselves togeather at severall tymes in severall counties. And whereas Alice Countess of Darby (beinge the generall, & ringe leader doth contrarie to the Lawes of God, and Nature, and to the Costome of her owne Sex strive to excell the Godds & Goddesses in vertue./ And farthermore to aggravate her offence shee hath brought in to the worlde Elyzabeth Countesse of Huntingdon (a daughter fitt for such a Mother) whoe most feloniously, & contrarie to her allegiance is now rydinge through the Realme stealinge the hearts of his Majesties Subjects where shee comes; they having likewise entised to followe their proceedinges theese Ladies. Buckhurst, Dorsett, Hunsden, Barkley, Stanhope &c. Somme of which doe moste hereticallye maintayne that bad husbandes are as much to bee respected, as good; through which Schisms the[y] have brought the most parte of the wives of this kingdome that have good husbandes to respect them very litle; and those that have bad to doate on them: such are the disorders of the Ladies: But farr worse the Gentlewoemen; Mistris Packington loves her bedd soe well that shee is seldome readie to goe to dyvine service. Mistris Gresley contrarie to all naturall Philosophie, & partly against the groundes of Geometry though shee bee all readie the tallest in the companie, will not withstanding weare the highest feather. There is allsoe one Mistris Secheverell who havinge not the feare of Cupid before her eyes beinge full of stubbornnesse & disobedience, & forgettinge to honor her parentes, hath kept her mayden head longer then hath anie way stoode with their likeinge or the publique good./ Furthermore, there

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Single Manuscripts is one Mistris Katherinn Fisher whoe havinge the greene sicknes apparantly, refuseth to take the ordenarie meanes in such a Case provided; Soe that unlesse your Lordshipps help by Injunction; your said Orator feareth greatly shee wilbee acceessarie to her owne death. And her sister Mistris Mary Fisher lyvinge in continnuall hatred hath most malitiouslie gyven the title of an Enimie to an honest & vertuous gentleman; whoe wilbee forth comminge at your Lordshippes pleasure to Justifie as much in Court. There is allsoe amonge them a gentlewoman whom your said Orator doth not perfectly remember; who havinge entertayned an able servant, doth notwithstandinge allowe him but 7 kisses a daye for his maintenance (as hee affirmeth) wherof hee is not able to lyve: May it therefore please your good Lordshipps to make them upp 14teen it being soe conscionable a case, & the poore man havinge wife and children. There are divers other Ladies, and Gentlewoemen, whoe (though noe man can accuse them of anie publique misdemeanor) yet are they to bee punished for soe desperately thrustinge themselves into a companie soe full of Infection. &c. W Sk./24

There is at least one other piece from the entertainment at Ashby that is recorded in the Skipwith manuscript, a poem in which many of the gentlewomen involved in the festivities, including some mentioned in the “chancerye Bill,” are identified, mostly by initials. The text in Add. 25707, which may or may not have been written by Skipwith, reads: L: R Faire Mayde [more] then pretious Free from all thoughtes vicious Knowe hee that is all glorious thinckes noe workes meritorious Hunt D Ever much honored mayst thou bee and praysd to all eternitye for thou art full of curtesye materiall Love and Pyetye? LH Fayre one thincke yow noe scorne of this this token comes from Lacheseso

o

one of the three Fates

British Library MS Additional 25707 117 Shee and her Sisters by their will give all their power to save, or kill, to yow, to spynn, to cutt, to twist, none shall live Longer then yow liste./ Dun This girdle shall imbrace that waste desir’d of all to bee imbracd but all the worlde shall bee beguilde save onely Fortunes eldest Childe L: D: H Yf your Fortune maye bee as good or your deserts to menn doe merritt noe livinge thinge of flesh and blood fayne heaven sooner shall inherritt La.St Lett mee stande upp and looke about mee the fayrest thinge I see without mee, hath drawne a toye not worth her takeinge her Fortune was not of my makeinge. Mistris Gr yf yow doe use your Fortune well, perchance twill save yor soule from hell. beleeve it not, It is a lye nothing doth merritt when yow dye./ Mistris St Fayre thou art, but curst and cruell sharpe as thorne, and yett a Jewell, this comfort shall thye Freinde Inheritt thou has an understandinge spirritt, I am att a Poynte what chance doth fall, happen what will Ile throwe att all, keepe yow your beautye from the Sunne your face once marrd your weddings done./

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Single Manuscripts Mrs Fisher your Fortunes better then their partes whose purses hath pence, for yours hath harts yett myne is not in all the Store, my Mistris had it longe before.25 (f. 175r-v)

A completely different and longer lottery poem connected with the fes­ tivities as Ashby, with some of the same women identified, is found in Hunt. MS EL 34 B9, f. 1r-v, where it is attributed to “W:Sk:.”26 As Knowles points out, it was a custom to circulate texts of aristocratic entertainments to those wishing to have a record of them or to those who were not able to attend.27 In between “A chancerye Bill” and the lottery poem, there are two texts that appear to be from a masque or entertainment: “The Hermitts speech” (“Wonder of beautye staye and passe noe further” [ff. 173–74]) and “The Fayryes speech” (“Heavens what doe I behould” [f. 174v]), both apparently unique copies. One might consider these as possibly by Skipwith.

Figure 4.14 Hand O: Excerpt from anonymous poem, “I am resolved noe more to expose,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 148. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

Three of the Skipwith neighbors figure importantly in the collection. The first is the recusant, rusticating Catholic poet Sir John Beaumont of Grace Dieu, the brother of the more famous poet-dramatist Francis Beaumont. Although, after attendance at Oxford, he functioned freely in an early-Jacobean London environment, in contact with other Catholics, his conviction for recusancy in 1607 led to the confiscation of two-thirds of his Leicestershire properties and his physical confinement to a fivemile radius of his home. Nevertheless, through his contacts with the

British Library MS Additional 25707 119

Figure 4.15 Hand P: Excerpt from anonymous poem, “Is it true I am derided,” BL. MS Add. 25707, f. 148. Reproduced by permission of the British Library.

mother of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, he wrote poems de­ signed to curry favor at court: an epithalamion for Buckingham’s 1620 marriage (“An Epithalamion to my Lord Marquesse Buckingham & his fayre & vertious [sic] Lady” [“Severe and serious Muse” (f. 72)]), en­ comiastic verses addressed to King James, then, later, poems for Prince Charles and Buckingham.28 The Skipwith manuscript contains a copy of his long poem, “Bosworth Field” (1629) (ff. 82–89v), which, Roger Sell observes, “fulsomely endorses James’s claim to legitimacy as a descen­ dant of the victorious Henry Tudor,” but which also idealizes the values of the old gentry and aristocracy. The Skipwith manuscript also includes Beaumont’s poem on the desire for greatness (“Thou would’st bee greate, & to such height wouldst rise” [f. 59r-v])29 and his piece in the person of the Duke of Buckingham designed to welcome King Charles to Burley (“Sir yow have ever shin’d upon me bright” (1621) [f. 70v]).30 Sir John Beaumont’s “An Elegie upon the death of the Lady Clifton” (“Her tongue hath ceas’d to speak, which might make dumbe” [ff. 63v–64]) is misascribed in this manuscript to his brother Francis, who also com­ posed an elegy for her.31 Finally, the collection includes Beaumont’s 518line translation of Juvenal’s tenth satire (ff. 111–17), a blistering con­ temptus mundi criticism of the human desire for wealth, power, glory, and longevity. The choice of this poem, one of Juvenal’s most popular satires, perhaps reflects the political alienation of Beaumont, who, in his confinement in Leicestershire, might have found congenial the poem’s satiric distance on the world of political scrambling and covetousness. A country squire such as Sir Henry Skipwith might have appreciated the poem’s perspective on the dangers and temptations of the high-stakes politics of the capital.

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Sir John Beaumont also wrote an epitaph for Sir William Skipwith’s funeral monument not recorded in the Skipwith manuscript, a poem in which he portrays his neighbor and friend as an ideal member of the country gentry. One of the values he might have shared with Sir William is a “country” party devotion to traditional values of the provincial gentry, as contrasted with the corruptions of London and the Court, “Upon his Noble Friend, Sir William Skipwith” (“To frame a man, who in those gifts excels”).32 Three poems by Francis Beaumont are interspersed in the Skipwith manuscript in a run of poems by Donne: the much anthologized piece, “An Elegye upon the death of the Ladie Markham” (“As unthrifts greive in straw for theere paund beds” [f. 30r-v]), “A letter to the Countess of Rutlande” (“Madam: soe maye my verses pleasing bee” [f. 31r-v]), and “Why should not Pillgrymes to thy bodie come” (f. 60v). In addition, the manuscript also contains Beaumont’s love poem titled, in the textually flawed 1653 edition of his verse,33 “The examination of his Mistris Perfections”34 (“Stand still my happines and swell my harte” [f. 157r-v]). Sir William Skipwith might have known John Fletcher while he in London or in Leicestershire. In a dedicatory poem to his play, The Faithful Shepherdess, the playwright addresses Sir William as part of an elite readership able to appreciate the wit of his tragicomedy.35 The manuscript also has two elegies on the death of Francis Beaumont: G. Lucy’s (“I doe not not Wonder Beaumont thou art dead” [f. 43v]) and Thomas Pestell’s “On the death of Mr. Francis Beamont” (“Unto thy everlasting memorye” [f. 44–45]), and another by “T. G.” (“Why should I spend a teare?” [45v]). The second neighbor associated with the Skipwith manuscript was Thomas Pestell, a Leicestershire clergyman-poet who was patronized by both the Beaumont family and the Earl and Countess of Huntingdon (until his falling out with the Earl).36 A significant portion of his verse appears in the Skipwith collection, probably transcribed in the mid-tolate Caroline period. In addition to his elegy on the death of Francis Beaumont, the manuscript contains his long encomiastic poem to the Countess of Huntingdon (Elizabeth Stanley Hastings, whom John Donne also addressed in two verse epistles) (“Since wee perceave not onely wealth but witt” [ff. 68–69]). This verse epistle elicited the two answer poems following it in the collection, the first by “Tho[mas]. B.” (probably Thomas Bancroft),37 “To T P on the good woman” (“Parson your lynes are smoth, Invention good” [f. 69]), and the second by “E. C.” (“The hand that mov’d thee (Pestell) thus to pound” [f. 70r-v]). The latter is listed in the table of contents of the manuscript as “Catlin’s verses of T.P.”; the writer was probably Edward Catlin of Leicestershire.38 As Christopher Haigh points out in a fascinating account of Pestell’s eccelesiastical and social conflicts and troubles, Pestell religiously held to a moderately Laudian line, but also championed the rights of the poor, was in conflict not only with some of his parishioners but also

British Library MS Additional 25707 121 ultimately with the Earl of Huntingdon, whom he served as chaplain.39 Huntingdon supported puritan ministers, such as Arthur Hildersham (to whom he was related),40 whereas Pestell expressed opposition to Hildersham and his adherents, a stance that led to the Earl’s supporting those who brought charges of misconduct against Pestell. Pestell also had insulted Huntingdon’s dignity (on which the impecunious Earl insisted) when, demanding payments the Earl owed him for the tutelage of his children, he said to the resistant and condescending magnate, “‘they were all come from Adam and Eve, and … there was no such difference between [him] and his lordship.’”41 In the light of the rift between Pestell and Huntingdon, the complementary poem to the Countess looks like an attempt to make peace with the Earl, or at least to decrease his hostility. In early 1618, Pestell had composed, for Sir Thomas Beaumont of Coleorton, a masque performed as part of a belated celebration of the marriage of Sir William Seymour to the sister of Robert, third Earl of Essex, the noble whose alleged erectile disfunction facilitated the notorious Frances Howard’s divorce from him and her marriage to the Earl of Somerset. As Philip Finkelpearl has shown, Pestell celebrated in the Coleorton masque the value of the provincial old aristocracy, including not only the shamed Essex but also Huntingdon, who was in attendance with his wife: in doing so, he wrote a kind of politically oppositionist masque that asserted the values of the “Country” over those of the “Court.”42 The Somerset-Howard marriage scandal is represented in a rare pair of poems included in the Skipwith manuscript, one defending and one attacking the Countess after her conviction for murdering Sir Thomas Overbury: “Petitio” (“Looke, and lament behould a face of Earth” [f. 46]) and “Respontio” (“It’s strange to se a face soe highe in birth” [f. 46]).43 The Skipwiths’ connection, by marriage, with the family of Donne’s closest friend, Sir Henry Goodyer,44 might have been a means by which the texts of various Donne poems came to the collection, as Joshua Eckhardt has suggested,45 but it might also explain the presence in the manuscript of the unique copy of the epithalamion Goodyer wrote for the marriage of Princess Elizabeth, “Epithalamion, of the Princess Mariage by Sr H G” (“Which of you Muses please” [ff. 37v–38]).46 The manuscript has also a rare copy of the poem Goodyer composed colla­ boratively with Donne, probably during Donne’s visit to Polesworth in 1613: “A Letter written by Sr. H: G: and J:D. alternis vicibus” (“Since ev’ry Tree beginns to blossome now” [f. 37]). This piece would have just preceded the composition of Donne’s Goodfriday poem, which, as noted above, also appears in the collection.47 This manuscript compilation developed from the time of Sir William Skipwith’s functioning in London, the Court, and Leicestershire until his death; then through the late Jacobean and Caroline periods in which many of the university and courtly poems were written, culminating with the

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poem presented as an elegy for the executed Charles I, a piece that was originally done for Prince Henry, but reused, as many elegies were, for new purposes.48 The earlier work was collected by Sir William Skipwith—for example, the Donne poems of the first section of the manuscript and pieces such as the poem on the lady who took part in the Masque of Blackness and the prose piece that was part of the 1607 en­ tertainment of the Countess of Derby at Ashby. Poems composed after the time of Sir William’s death, including some of Donne’s, were compiled by his son Henry. Some, if not most, of his actual transcriptions might have been made during a period of Royalist retirement49 following the English Civil Wars and the execution of Charles I in 1649: Mary Hobbs char­ acterizes Hand A (Henry’s hand) as a typical one of the commonwealthperiod.50 The sources of the verse appear to have been, in the main, manuscript ones, but there are obviously some poems, such as Sir John Harington’s epigrams, that were transcribed from printed sources.51

The Skipwith Collection and the Broad System of Manuscript Transmission The items gathered in this manuscript represent an intersection of var­ ious social and socioliterary networks: poems from the university (par­ ticularly Christ Church, Oxford) by poets such as Richard Corbett and William Strode; poems from the environment of London and the Inns of Court, where writers such as Donne, Henry Blount, Robert Ellice, and others functioned; pieces connected to the Court and to courtly pa­ tronage circles, including King James’s own poem, “You women that doe London love soe well” (f. 73r-v); and, finally, poems deriving from Leicestershire in geographical proximity to the Skipwith houses at Cotes and Prestwold. Poems and poetry collections migrated from one en­ vironment to another, especially in the 1620s through the 1640s. For example, Christ Church, Oxford collections expanded as compilers moved from the University to London.52 Manuscripts connected to Henry King were copied and transmitted beyond their original circle: it is not surprising that the Skipwith manuscript shares many poems with, for instance, the Stoughton Manuscript. Mary Hobbs counts thirty-five poems that appear in both collections:53 there are actually thirty-seven—twelve by King, six by Carew, two by Jonson, three by Sir Thomas Cary, two by Blount, two by Herrick, one by Walton Poole, one by Robert Ellice, and eight by anonymous authors, twenty-nine of them transcribed by Hand A. Many song texts appear among the contents of the Skipwith manuscript, perhaps the result of the compilers’ connec­ tions to London musical circles. Throughout the manuscript, country/ court, periphery/center, Leicestershire/London relationships and con­ trasts are visible and the impact of political events, crises, and scandals is seen spreading out from the city to the provinces: for example, the death

British Library MS Additional 25707 123 54

of Prince Henry (1612); the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick, the Elector Palatine;55 the deaths of Queen Anne (1618) and King James (1625);56 the scandalous divorce of Frances Howard from the Earl of Essex; the political rise and assassination of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham;57 the death of the Protestant hero, Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, during the Thirty Years War;58 the Commons Petition of 1642 (“If bleeding soules dejected hearts finde grace”);59 and the execution of Charles I. One of the questions raised by the Skipwith collection is: why was so much of John Donne’s poetry included in it? The most obvious answer is one that is related to social networking: both in London and Leicestershire, Sir William Skipwith, and later his son Henry, had con­ tacts with individuals close to Donne and Donne’s social network, especially Sir Henry Goodyer, so it is not surprising that Donne texts were transmitted to the Skipwiths.60 And, given the practice, evident in many manuscripts, of mixing Donne’s poems with those of his associates and contemporaries, it is not surprising, in the separate blocks of Donne poems in the Skipwith collection to find pieces by such poets as Francis Beaumont, Nicholas Hare, Sir Henry Wotton, and Sir Henry Goodyer. But it is, I think, insufficient to put the transmission of Donne’s poems in a context of simple social networking and, as the collecting of his verse in personal anthologies developed over time, in the context of the esthetic valuing of his writing. Initially, and for some time after their composi­ tion, most of Donne’s poems, in their sociopolitical contexts, carried with them a politically oppositionist charge: most of them spoke stylis­ tically to a generation of independent-minded and politically involved men—for example, those “wits” and parliament-men of the early Jacobean era who gathered at such places as the Mitre Tavern. Michelle O’Callaghan has written about this important social group.61 A couple of generations later, such verse and the cavalier poetry influ­ enced by it could represent the political alienation of royalists in the era of the Civil Wars and Interregnum. Of course, the patronage poetry Donne and others wrote—his epistles to Lady Bedford, for example—was a reminder of some of the social constraints under which intellectually and socially ambitious men operated. This aspect of Donne’s career and writings are represented in some of the Donne poems in the Skipwith collection and echoed in such other verse as Thomas Pestell’s complementary poem for the Countess of Huntingdon, and Sir Henry Goodyer’s epithalamion for the Princess Elizabeth and Elector Palatine marriage, but what came along with the Donne texts was a set of attitudes and social strategies that might have been attractive to independent-minded gentlemen caught between the delicate political and social relations in the county and more complex political allegiances taking shape in London and the Court. Donne anti-courtly love elegies, his satires, and his basically anti-Petrarchan love lyrics suited the tastes

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of a nascent political opposition in Jacobean England, men with whom Donne and William Skipwith socialized. Skipwith’s assertion of his own independent judgment, which put him in conflict with the fifth Earl of Huntingdon at one point, was consistent with the stance of many young parliamentarians and wits with whom he was associated in late 1590s London and in the 1601 and 1604–10 Parliaments.

The Skipwith Manuscript and Religiopolitical Conflict If Crown/Parliament, city/country relations are visible in the contents of the Skipwith manuscript, so too are elements of religious com­ plexities and conflicts—both on the national and local levels. There are items in the manuscript directly or indirectly dealing with religious divisions. Although Sir William Skipwith was, like his patron, the fifth Earl of Huntingdon, a defender of puritans, he was a good friend of the recusant Catholic Sir John Beaumont. The manuscript contains, in the section in which we find many epigrams by Sir John Harington, a poem (attributed in some manuscripts to the Jesuit Henry Fitzsimon) which was printed in the editions of Harington’s Epigrams, “Of swearinge” (“In ellder tyme an antient Custome was” [f. 129]),62 a piece that laments the loss of traditional Catholic culture. In terms of the religious dynamics of Leicestershire, it is interesting that the one prose “Problem” of Donne’s that is represented in the Skipwith manuscript is “why doe puritans make longest sermons” (f. 119, in Hand A).63 There are, however, also poems with anti-Catholic language or metaphors—for example, the apparently unique piece ascribed to “D. Fooaks”: If any have the grace at once to bee Inspir’d with love and wisdome, then tis hee That loves himsealfe— All objects else are shaddowes voyde of matter which men reflect like glass, women like water Foule weather dimms the first, this more unkinde Is lost and perishes with everye winde. A freinde which at the best yeilds most content like to a partiall myrrour doth praesent But what seems pleasinge, and our spotts belyes More truely learned from our enimyes. but what’s in women that should make them proude? Or men run madd? Doth not an eveninge cloude spread rarer colours? yet that various guise Doth ravish none except yonge childrens eyes. I hate not eather, and than much profess If any for his freinde incure distrust

British Library MS Additional 25707 125 He may as one who is content to lye In prison for some pious heresye Beget some pyttye, but he that shall make Himsealfe unhappy for a womans sake I dare to him as much charitye denye As t’him thats martyr’d for Idolatrye If I blaspheame time may these thoughts dispell And I believe; but by some Miracle. D. Fooaks. (f. 91) Referring to imprisoned Catholics as guilty of “pious heresye” and executed Catholics as being “martyr’d for Idolatrye” exemplifies a strong anti-Catholic religious bias. This piece is followed by an anti-courtly poem by a Leicestershire neighbor of the Skipwith’s, Thomas Aston: “A peecefull mind goes homely cladd” (f. 91).64 The idea of the Horatian “happy man” living a life in retreat from the world of vicious competition was an attractive one in a period of deepening religiopolitical conflict.65 There is a unique poem earlier in the manuscript added at the bottom of a page by Hand A on this very topic: A Contry life Happy who his life in his owne feilds outweares whome his owne house saw Boy & full of yeares whome fortune spunne not < > forth in various toyles nor ever drunke his water in strange soyles Lett Marchants rove & to the Indies stray This knowes more quiet rest, they know more way. (f. 47v) This is a particularly appropriate poem to appear in a provincial collection.

Rare or Unique Poems in the Collection Despite the fact that this manuscript has a large number of poems by well-known and identifiable authors, Add. 25707 has a large number of rare or unique pieces on a wide variety of topics. Several are lyrics or songs about love. One apparently unique poem compliments a pious woman whom the speaker loves. He uses the inexpressibility topos to claim he is unable to show his feelings properly: You whome my chance hath made my choyce and cheefe commander of my harte your love in which I soe rejoyce

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Single Manuscripts is not exprest by witt nor arte the faithfull love to yow I owe doth farr exceede my reach to showe Yf in theise Lynes yow chance to finde my thoughtes layde open to your viewe nothinge cann more contente my minde since truly yett yow never knewe the place whereas your vertues lye it is unseene to every eye. Yf you desire the cause to know it is not in mee to imparte true Love is not in ^open^ shewe it lyes still buryed in the hart And therefore knowe it is your Lott to bee beloved and knowe it not And though this daye you doe incline your thoughtes to matters more devine even to that heavenly meditation which doth exceede Imagination, yett to your selfe this I presente in whose delightes rest my Contente. Finis (ff. 161v-62)

A unique poem that may have been influenced by Donne’s valedictory lyrics dramatizes a disappointed or scorned lover’s departing from his beloved and uses the occasion for a plea for amorous reciprocity: Farwell I faine would saye, as faine departe but whoe cann speake, or goe, without a harte. and yett thou art soe cruell in thy swaye, to wonder that my goeinge I delay: when you, the Steere of all my course detayne, and thincke tis sayle enough to have disdaine: but scornes though they bee most compleate offend noe hartes but those are great. and alasse I am soe free from haveinge one, I aske, a harte from thee./ yett Eyes I hadd could soe disdayne, a hart that could not Love unlov’d againe, an Eare that was soe strongly armde by womans voyce t’was never charm’d,

British Library MS Additional 25707 127 a tongue, that falsehood did decline, untill att Last it learnt of thyne. yett since yours have betrayed myne eyes, they serve but for your scornes disguise. my harte yow have in such a tye, that taught by yours it gives it selfe the Lye. my Eare that freely past alonge is captiv’d with a silente songe. yett send mee theise but as afore, Ile pardon all, and aske noe more. then I should thinckt as slight a taske to saye farwell, as you to aske. but nowe I have a Just pretence not to speake a word of sence. Finis (f. 173) An apparently unique persuasion-to-love poem dramatizes a scene of writing instruction: Writeing Coppyes Sweet faire one, would yow learne to write oh lett mee teach yow to inditeo not that tis in the witt of man to doe more then that Spirritt can

o

write; have sex

but that I would directe that hart soe full of vertue and of arte to save his life that is as true, as ever creature was to yow/ In your beginninge take great heede what words yow teach your Penn to speake Least yow doe make the hart to bleede which none but yow have power to breake, Fayre is the hand that houldes the Penn and Fayre the Paper too, what then o If too much gallo bee in your Incke bitterness; oak excrescence used in ink-making yow’le never write what I doe thincke, Not that tis faire, but that tis true sett I this coppye to your vewe, nor that yow neede to wounde your hand

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Single Manuscripts here doe theise Joyned Lettres stande for thates too good, too faire, too quicke, yett too too slowe to heale the Sicke where is the faulte, tis in your heart which hath noe feelinge of my smart Soe go’th my Fortune crooked and awrye now upp, nowe downe, nowe too too lowe, nowe highe, the framer of all fortunes good, or ill, Left onely minde to your sweete will saye but the word, and it shall bee made even, such is his will that governes earth and heaven./ Ites not your fate tis not your witt though all the world admireth it, Ites not your honor ^fashion^ nor your graces though they exceede a thousand faces It is your vertue tyes mee fast which shall not ^all^ earthlye thinges outlast though yow the fayrest that ere was borne and I the poorest, thincke yow noe scorne, that I doe love yow above measure never was there annye tresure denyed unto the poorest snake that lov’d the sonne for vertues sake. Here theise coppyes all are ended much I knowe < > maye bee ammended more Lett your Favor bee begunne sweet saye Amen and I have done. Finis (f. 175v)

Another apparently unique piece is a palinode: I am resolv’d no more t’expose A sigh a thought a Teare for thee Nor will I censur’d bee mongst those that know not how themselves to free when they in love unanswear’d bee All charmes & spells with false illusion And all that Arte can ill invent To bring mee to a sad confusion I now am able to prevent By science of a more extent. I fear not now attractive Eyes

British Library MS Additional 25707 129 nor any other thy perfection That they my spiritts can surprise And worke upon my imperfection To bend it under thy subjection. No more thy Intellectuall part Though it bee strong shall e’re prevaile And seize upon my yeelding hart By drawing over mee a vayle To make both sense & Judgment faile. (f. 81v) Other rare or unique poems include a long elegy for a young man (“I cannot for my owne loss weep, as those” [ff. 46v–47]) done by someone whose initials are “T.G.” Two poems about a beautiful woman (“Those nimble fancyes that with artfull hand” [f. 58v] and “My eares were pleased first, my opticks next” [f. 58v]) were transcribed by Hand A. Hand D transcribed the elegy on the death of Prince Henry, “Hee that can write for teares and can but thinke” (f. 72v), that appears to have survived in no other manuscript. In between two poems by Henry Skipwith and several others by his father, there are some miscellaneous pieces: a polite sonnet about the frustrations of a scorned lover of an exalted mistress is found in a unique copy on f. 177,66 a poem by “N.H.” on an adulterous woman (“If each ones faultes were on their Foreheads writt” [f. 177]) that is found in only one other manuscript (BL MS Harley 4888, f. 253), a poem in the voice of a woman rejecting all potential husbands (“Some Husbands are too madd” [f. 177v]), and a strange poem addressed to a married man who seems to have contracted venereal disease: The happyest Starr shyned att your birth that ever yet gave light to earth blest in your selfe, blest in your life blest in your Freinds most in your wife strive with your soule and dearest blood to make her saye hers was as good Sir yow have had a payne before as I have heard a Moneth and more If wise menn give a righteous doome you gott in a narrowe Roome; but surely I dare pawne my soule the way to heaven’s not throughe that hole Faire vertue nowe is worth noe monye a Poxe of all ill Lucke

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Single Manuscripts for everye Warren hath a Connye and everye Parke a Bucke But I will neither sighe nor groane I know the worst Ile lye alone This is a secrett Ile tell it to none harke in your eare, your Maydenheads gone I am att a Poynte what chance doth fall happen what will Ile throwe att all. Finis. (f. 177v)

Finally, there is a a series of “Posyes for Trenchers,” a series of eleven verses marked consecutively in the margin (except for the seventh).67

Poetry by the Compilers One of the notable features of the system of manuscript transmission of literary texts is the blurring of the boundary between compilers of an­ thologies and the poets whose work was collected. Since the system as­ sumed that those who gathered verse also were free to revise, supplement, and answer the texts they recorded as well as to include their own poetic productions in the anthologies they shaped, it is not surprising that we often find compiler verse in the contents of these manuscripts. The Skipwith collection is a good example of this phenomenon. We have in it some sixteen poems by Sir William Skipwith and three by Henry Skipwith: the former signed most of his poems with his special cypher, “W:Sk,”68 and the latter put his name to three poems, but there are other pieces in the collection that may have been written by them.69 The first three poems by Sir William Skipwith appear on ff. 135–37. Later in the manuscript, in a section written in the same hand and same ink (ff. 179–184v),70 there are nine poems ascribed to “W:Sk:,” and several others in the same mode that might have been also been written by him. The unique poem subscribed “W.Sk:” that is found on f. 135, “A Woeman” (“Hee’s jud’gd, and damb’d that saith thou arte noe more”), may have been a piece meant to accompany a gift.71 A relatively rare poem on f. 135v, a love complaint, “If anie bee content with woordes; tis I,” is subscribed “W: Skip.,” but it also is found in NLW MS Penairth 346A, p. 13, and in the 1654 printed anthology, The Harmony of the Muses (p. 90). The unique third poem in this group is an interesting piece whose second, third, and fourth stanzas present a woman voicing her struggle between honor and virtue, on the one hand, and desire (or “synn”) on the other: Coward awake out of this dreame of death thy Mistris smiles, she is inclin’de to pittie.

British Library MS Additional 25707 131 I saw a sigh steale fe sauftleyo from her breath Mee thought shee soonge this lamentable dittie Alas that woemen should bringe woe to men It’s want of grace in us, & witt in them.

o

softly

Were wee more circumspect in all our actions, and wey’d our wordes in ballance of discretion then should wee free our honors from detractions from vertuouse thoughts wee should have no degression What distraction is my poore soule in rackt betwixt pitty, sorrowe, shame, & synn. Pittie for him, for mee is soe perplexed, sorrie my pittie can doe him noe good Shake for to see my soule, & bodie vexed with synn which strives with vertue in my blood. O God that men could bee content with this to use our bodies, not our soules amiss. With that meethought shee held mee forthe a booke and bad mee sweare by all that there was holy that nor by idle worde, nor wanton Looke I should accuse my thought, of anie folly And then sayth shee: with that my sences waken, and when I hopte for Joye: I was forsaken. W: Skip:/(f. 136) The bottom third of this page is blank. There are two more compiler poems on f. 137, the first another love complaint, “O thou that art the Phoenix of our time” (which may be a sonnet in distichs),72 the second an explosion of misogynistic invective against a shameful woman, a piece also found in University of Leeds Brotherton MS Lt q 11 (no. 48): O thou that art the Tigar of this age Conceav’d in syn, & gott in bloodie Rage; thou that art but A pothecaries daughter thy damm did nothinge worse that nature taught her then to delight in anie fleshe & bloode for procreation of soe litle good. Soe litle good? Noe of soe great an evell equal’d by non but Lucifer the Divell Thy pride is full as great, thy synns as manie that thou maist fall as farr, there is not anie that doth not wishe, or hope, or feare to see

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Single Manuscripts Such is the Love of all that followes thee. God in his Justice for the synns of men did send thee for a greevous plague even then when thy unhappie Make had soe provok’d his heavy wrath: that needes hee must bee yok’d to such a filthy, foule, Impostummd sperit as might exceed the grosnes of his merrit and make him Crie with David daye, & night my sorrow Lord is ever in my sight o O thou unfortunate, debosto, dejected debauched unhappie man, why shouldst thou bee directed o by such a fasenatiouso dyvelishe thinge extremely wicked that to thy soule will dire damnation bringe without respect of yssue, or of frendes or Conscience; onely for to serve her endes Awake for shame awake, & see thyne error which all thy frendes doe see with greefe & terror And bee not Carried blindfolde to the Devill by that unhallowed thinge the worst of evill, and with Contricion satisfie thy maker and praye to him that Belzebub maye take her To which for one poore noe Ile finde thee tenn with harte & soule shall crie Amen Amen. W Sk. (f. 137)

After excoriating the bad wife who is the object of the invective, the speaker of this poem speaks on behalf of himself and the husband’s other friends urging him to reject the abominable spouse. This poem is unlike any other poem in this manuscript attributed to Sir William Skipwith. The group of Skipwith poems found later in the manuscript includes the following: “Awake, awake, thou Mournefulst Muse of Nyne” (f. 179) “What meanes my Muse, or is the Musor madd” (f. 179) “Oh why have I sworne that yow are faire and wyse” (f. 179v) “Faithfull intents are free from superstition” (f. 179v) “Beggers and I for all wee doe receave” (f. 179v) “Sighe deepe my hart and breake and paye thy debte” (f. 180) “Restore, restore againe, cruell restore” (f. 180r-v) “Yf health, or Fortune, or a good dayes happ” (f. 181v) “Late standinge in a Hawthorne tree” (f. 181v) “Lett not, oh lett nott, deere deare Ladye lett not” (f. 182) “Blest bee all causes of that blessed thinge” (f. 183)

British Library MS Additional 25707 133 Some of Sir William Skipwith’s poems are in unique copies in this col­ lection, but some others, as noted above, are shared with other manu­ scripts. With the exception of the misogynistic piece in the manner of Donne’s “The Comparison” and “The Anagram” (“O thou that art the Tigar of this age”) and a series of unascribed satiric trencher verses possibly by him, Sir William seems to have written verse mainly in the mode of courtly complement suitable to polite social relations (either at court or in the country). His work in this manner shows some marks of Donne’s influence. One poem, “What meanes my Muse, or is the Musor madd” (f. 179), apologizes for allowing “sinful Fyres” to intrude on a Platonic relationship. This is followed by three other of his poems about a polite relationship: “Oh why have I sworne that yow are faire and wyse” (f. 179v), “Faithfull intents are free from superstition” (f. 179v), and “Beggers and I for all wee doe receave” (f. 179v), and “Sighe deepe my hart and breake and paye thy debte” (f. 180), the next-to-last addressed “Madam.” Some unique copies of poems, surrounded by others acribed to “W: Sk:” may be by him. For example, just before a poem ascribed to him, “Yf health, or Fortune, or a good dayes happ” (f. 181v), there are three love complaints that might be his: “Sicke is your servant, weake and sicke his muse” (f. 180v) (a New Year’s poem), “Poore harte what makes the sighe soe sore” (f. 181), and “Come Muses come and helpe mee to expresse” (f. 181). One poem, an address to a “proude” mistress by a man who professes his fidelity actually includes his surname in the last line: To the Ladye that cannot Love Lett not, oh lett nott, deere deere Ladye lett not those pretious things which God and nature gave yow lett make yow growe proude with’t, lett mee saye forgett not though matcht by none Its mercy that must save yow, Which that fayre mynde of yours must never bannishe, till into nothinge all the worlde doe vannishe./ And though your vertues give mee good assureance, your glorious thoughts are free from any tainte, yett for I knowe yow hould some harts in durance, and are a woman, therefore yett noe Saincte By your good Favor lett mee bee alow’d to saye againe Fayre Ladye bee not proude./ The greatest Monarch that the world hath knowne, findinge his hart to swell with victorye,

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Single Manuscripts wonne by the power of God not by his oneo, oown to bring his spirritt to humilitye, gave leave to tell him manns power was vanitye, as a Remembrance of his humanitye./ yf hee had cause to feare his owne ambition, for wynneinge towns and countryes in those parts then thincke not slightlye of this admonition to yow fayre one that conquerd have more harts Then anye Monarch ever yett hath done and by your conquest hath more glory wonne./ yett is there one, one onely one there is, who (pardon mee) I must preferr before, both yow and all the world in that or this, of whom my Penn can saye nor lesse nor more, She cannot equall’d bee by flesh and blood, in anye thinge that vertuous menn call good,/ Shee shee it is whoe even with superstition, I doe with all humilitye adore, her favor is the topp of my ambition soe maye it bee noe mann can hope for more./ Which when with any thought I falsefye, scorn’d, forlorne, unpittyed lett mee dye, she maye say dye: this maye shee saye beside is Skipwith true: None then but I shall guide. Finis (f. 182)

Several of Skipwith’s poems might be songs: for example, “Coward awake out of this dreame of death” (f. 136); “Sighe deepe my hart and breake and paye thy debte” (f. 180); and “Restore, restore againe, cruel restore” (f. 180r-v). Sometimes the poems are marked by social occa­ sions, such as the sending of New Year’s greetings or gift-giving. Poems related to the former occasion are “Beggers and I for all wee doe re­ ceave” (f. 179v) and another poem, possibly by Skipwith, “Sicke is your Fortune se[r]vant, weake and sicke his muse’ (f. 180v). The latter oc­ casion is the context of, for example, Skipwith’s poem accompanying the gift of a knife to a woman (“Hee’s jug’d and damb’d that saith thou art no more” [f. 135]). Another piece celebrates the birth of a child (“Blest bee all causes of that blessed thinge” [f. 183]). Other poems to social superiors signal clientage: for example, one is addressed “My Lord” and offers itself as a “poore token” acknowledging duty and obligation (“Yf health, or Fortune, or a good dayes happ” [f. 181v]). This body of work

British Library MS Additional 25707 135 reflects Sir William’s involvement within a social and political elite in London and the Court. Of the other unsubscribed poems in this part of the manuscript, William might have written “Posyes for Trenchers” (ff. 178r-v), “Gallus that courtly gallante is become” (f. 180v), “Poore harte what makes the sighe soe sure” (f. 181), “Come Muses come and helpe mee to expresse” (f. 181), “Faithles farrwell adewe love I denye thee” (f. 181), the pastoral dialogue “Sheapard howe nowe what meanes that” (f. 182v), and “Unckle/ My hart commands mee write because I love yow” (f. 183r-v), the last an epistolary invitation for a visit—all of which are mixed into a run of poems ascribed to him. Henry Skipwith’s poems are in a different mode. Apart from the elegy for the executed Charles I (“Weepe, weepe even mankind weepe, soe much is dead” [f. 40r]),73 to which his name is attached, but which is an old poem he actually appropriated and adapted, there are two poems ascribed to him: both are exercises in religious abjection. The first, beginning “Base, vilde, and vaine, bee all our worldly Joyes” (f. 176r-v), positions the speaker as a mainstream Protestant, rejecting “the Romane Prelate” and some of the theological positions of Catholicism regarding “merritt,” “pennance,” “workes of super arrogacion,” “meditacion on the virgin pure,” and “the blessed saints.” The second is a more straightforward expression of re­ pentant sorrow for “offences” and “greivous sinnes” (“Oh thou eternall comfort of my soule” [f. 176v]). Both pieces were appropriate for a poli­ tically defeated man who suffered for his loyal Royalism in the era of the Civil Wars. These poems thematically contrast with the poetic tastes re­ vealed in the selections transcribed elsewhere in the manuscript by Hand A.74

Conclusion To return, in conclusion, to the material features of the Skipwith manu­ script, I would like to highlight the fact that many hands are represented in it—at least fifteen, by my count, a large portion of the work copied by nonprofessional scribes (See Figures 4.1–4.15).75 This means that the whole manuscript, or individual parts of it that were bound in the seventeenthcentury, probably circulated within the social network and family of the compilers, open to the addition of new items in its available spaces.76 Some pieces in unique hands that appear nowhere else in the manuscript testify to the openness of this family collection to the contributions of a number of individuals within and beyond the immediate family. For example, the poem by “D. Fooaks” (“If any have the grace at once to bee” [f. 91]) is written in a hand (Hand J) found nowhere else in the manuscript, sug­ gesting that the author himself transcribed it. The texts that are preserved in this collection, including many rare or unique poems that do not appear in any other surviving document from

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the period, were connected to complex processes of social networking. The Skipwith manuscript, then, registers not only the movement of Sir William and his son back and forth from Leicestershire to London over the course of the last decade of the Elizabethan reign through the first half of the seventeenth century but also social and familial relations in the country setting. Some poems allude to social occasions: one anonymous poem, “The world is Gods lardge booke wheron wee Learne” (f. 166v), seems to have been written to accompany the gift of a Bible—probably to a child. Anagram poems for Dorothy King (f. 4) and Elizabeth Swayne (f. 94v) suggest social intimacies. Particular elegies for Leicestershire friends, such as Francis Beaumont reinforce local connections. In the larger national context, country/court and provincial/metropolitan relationships are visible in a collection that foregrounds the work of the Innsof-court and London poets such as John Donne, Henry Blount, and Robert Ellice; the productions of university poet-wits such as Richard Corbett, William Strode, Henry King, and Henry Reynolds; the work of courtiers such as Sir Robert Ayton and Thomas Carew; and the provincial neighbors such as Sir John Beaumont, Thomas Pestell, and Sir Henry Goodyer. Although it is a political and social elite involved in the production, circu­ lation, and compilation of this and many similar manuscripts from the period, such documents are the material traces of social transactions, geo­ graphical movements, and the general cultural cross-currents of the age.

Notes 1 John Nichols, The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, vol. III, Part I (London: John Nichols, 1800), 366. 2 Mary Hobbs, Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts (Aldershot, U.K.: Scolar Press, 1992), 62–67, discusses this manuscript and suggests that, after taking over from his father as compiler, Sir Henry might have “lost interest in the book after the death of his Royal master in 1649, and gave it to his son” (63) William. I am skeptical about Hobbs’s suggestion that Henry’s son might have taken over the work of compilation. 3 The manuscript is a folio (19×29.5 cm) with 186 leaves. There is a physical description of the manuscript in Joshua Eckhardt, Manuscript Verse Collectors and the Politics of Anti-Courtly Love Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 233–35. Because of its large Donne collection Add. 25707 (with the siglum A25) was used in their editions of Donne by Sir Herbert Grierson (ed.), The Poems of John Donne, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912) (see 2:cvii–cviii) and Helen Gardner (ed.), John Donne: The Elegies and The Songs and Sonnets (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965) (see lxxviii–lxxix). 4 See Richard Cust’s ODNB biography of Sir William Skipwith https://www. oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb9780198614128-e-40550?rskey=zRxXZv&result= (accessed 2 November 20). 5 James Knowles, “Marston, Skipwith and The Entertainment at Ashby,” English Manuscript Studies 1100–1700 3 (1992): 137–92, at 171–72. 6 Thomas Fuller, Worthies, quoted in Cust. 7 There are two strong candidates for the scribe I identify as Hand A: Henry Skipwith, Sir William’s son, and a cousin named William Skipwith, who lived

British Library MS Additional 25707 137

8 9 10 11 12

13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

in Derbyshire and had connections to Sir Kenelm Digby. On the latter, see Hobbs, 63. I think it more likely that this scribe was Henry Skipwith. His custody of his father’s papers and his transcribing of his own poems, sub­ scribed with a signature that resembles one in a letter from 1643 found in the Barington Papers (BL MS Egerton 2646, f. 201) makes it likely that he was the scribe who did the table of contents for the collection that comprises the first (originally numbered) 167 pages and who made a point of going through the manuscript to insert poems he had collected. Another elegy for the same woman by Francis Beaumont is transcribed on f. 30r-v as is a second Beaumont poem “A letter to the Countess of Rutland” (“Madam: soe maye my verses pleasing bee” [f. 31r-v]). Mary is treated as a mediatrix. There is strong eucharistic language and emphasis on “merit.” Grierson, Donne, 1.434, prints this piece. Grierson, Donne, 1.436–37, prints this poem among the Dubia. This is untitled in the manuscript. Margaret Crum, First-Line Index of Manuscript Poetry in the Bodleian Library Oxford, 2 vols. (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1969), W2407, cites Eng. Poet. e.37, p. 30 and Eng. Poet. f. 9, p. 206. When citing Crum’s index I refer to her alphabetic/numeric coding of the poems. The other manuscripts in which the poem appears are Harv. MS Eng. 966.7, f. 16; Morgan Library MS MA 1057, p. 63; and Yale Osb. MS b.148, p. 150. This letter begins “I have learn’t that by those Lawes in which I am a little conversant …” (f. 64v). This Thomas Cary was the son of the Earl of Monmouth. The pieces of his included in the manuscript are “wherfore doe thy sad numbers flow” (f. 103) and “on a Lady Crossing the Seas” (“Farwel fayre saynt, may not the seas & winde” [f. 110]) (Crum, F 166). On f. 67, there is a piece from Jonson’s play, The Sad Shepherd, which was first published in 1640. Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 66. For this manuscript, see Mary Hobbs (ed.), The Stoughton Manuscript: A Manuscript Miscellany of Poems by Henry King and his Circle, circa 1636 (Aldershot, U.K.: Scolar Press, 1990). In addition to poems by Blount, there is a piece by Richard Clark, “on a faire Ladyes walking in hide parke” (“Sure twas the spring went by, for th’earth did wast” [f. 42v]). Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 93, points to these poems as a the­ matically linked group. Another poem from the cluster in Ros. MS 239/23 (p. 167) is found on f. 92 of Add. 25707 (“As the Gods have hitherto”), and a popular poem separate from the clusters in both manuscripts, “Dear, throw that flattring glass away” (Add. 25707, f. 154v and Ros. MS 239/23, p. 79) seems to have been copied separately in each manuscript from the groups that overlap. Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 64, suggests that this was a common practice. See Crum C60. The piece also appears in Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS CCC.309, f. 36. On f. 4, in Hand A, we find an elegy, “on Sr Kenelm Digbies Lady 1633” (“Fayre broken model of perfection rest”) by George Digby. See discussion of this occasion in Knowles, “Marston, Skipwith,” 137–38, 146–53, 170–73. Knowles, 173, states the “[t]he Entertainment at Ashby was an occasional piece, designed to celebrate the political power and coherence of a dynasty founded by the remarkable Dowager Countess of Derby …”

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24 A diplomatic version of this text is printed in Knowles, “Marston, Skipwith,” 180. 25 I am indebted to Steven May for providing this transcription. 26 This is printed as Skipwith’s poem in Knowles, “Marston, Skipwith,” 173–77. Knowles identifies the addressees as “La: Derby,” “La. Huntington,” “La. Hunsdon,” “La: Berckly,” “La: Stanhope,” “La: Coumpton,” “La: Fielding,” “Mistris Gresley,” “Mistris Packington,” “Mistris K: Fischer,” “Mistris Saychoverell,” “Mistris M: Ficher,” “Mistris Clavers,” and “Mistris Egerton.” He states, in “Identifying the Speakers: ‘The Entertainment at Ashby’ (1607),” Notes & Queries 233 (1988): 490, that “ these women may be best described as’Gentlewomen’ in Hastings household book,” that is as part of the Earl and Countess of Huntington’s entourage. Arnold Davenport (ed.), The Poems of John Marston (Liverpool, U.K.: Liverpool University Press, 1961), 42–43, speculates that “the occasion calling forth the verses happened during the house-party in honour of the Countess of Derby at Ashby … They are … to be spoke while gifts are presented from an accepted suitor a bridegroom to a lady. The general impression that they leave is that the occasion could well have been the annoucement of a formal betrothal. The gifts include a ring, jewels in the form of a heart (two hearts as well as a ‘poore pale hart,’ and a ‘fallse coulured’ heart are named), what appear to be jewels in the form of a night­ ingale and a treee, and an amethyst.” 27 “Marston, Skipwith,” 157. 28 Roger D. Sell (2004) “Beaumont, Sir John, first baronet (c.1584–1627)” https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001. 0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-1874?rskey=MfC723&result=1 (accessed 12 February 2020). 29 Printed in Roger Sell (ed.), The Shorter Poems of Sir John Beaumont (Åbo: Åbo Akademi, 1974), 178–80. 30 Printed in Sell, Shorter Poems, 139–40. 31 Sell, Shorter Poems, 313, identifies her as “Lady Penelope Clifton, the second daughter of Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, and Penelope née Devereux,” who died in 1613. 32 See Sell, Shorter Poems, 150. Cust points out that this poem was inscribed on the monument to Skipwith his wife had erected in the church at Prestwold. 33 See William Ringler, “The 1640 and 1653 Poems: By Francis Beaumont, Gent. and the Canon of Beaumont’s Nondramatic Verse,” Studies in Bibliography 40 (1987): 120–40. 34 Poems by Francis Beaumont (1653), sig. F3r-v. 35 “To the inheritour of all worthines, Sir William Skipwith. Ode” in The Faithful Shepheardess By John Fletcher (1608–9?). As Philip Finkelpearl, Court and Country Politics in the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 26–27, notes, Fletcher was beholden to several patrons residing in Leicestershire, including Sir Walter Aston and Henry Hastings, fifth earl of Huntington, as well as to Skipwith. 36 For an account of Pestell and his poetry, see Hannah Buchan (ed.), The Poems of Thomas Pestell (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1940), xv–lv. 37 Buchan, Poems of Pestell, 122, prints this poem and ascribes it to Bancroft, partly because Bancroft has another poem to Pestell printed in his Epigrammes, and Epitaphs (1639). The other possible candidate for author­ ship is Thomas Beedom: there is a commendatory/elegiac poem in the post­ humous edition of Beedom’s Poems Divine and Humane (1641) by “H. S.,” who may have been Henry Skipwith (“To the Memory of his Ingenious friend, Master Thomas Beedom, and on these his Poems” [sigs. A6v-A7]).

British Library MS Additional 25707 139 38 See Buchan, Poems of Pestell, 116–17, who prints a letter of his requesting a place from an alderman of Leicester. 39 “The Troubles of Thomas Pestell: Parish Squabbles and Ecclesiastical Politics in Caroline England,” Journal of British Studies 41 (2002): 402–28. Pestell was initially chaplain to Robert, third Earl of Essex (Buchan, Poems of Pestell, xxv). 40 Brett Usher, “The Fortunes of English Puritanism,” in Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake (eds.) Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England (Woodbridge, U.K.: The Boydell Press, 2006), 106–7, points out that the Hildersham and Hastings family were relatives and that Hildersham was chosen as minister for Ashby-de-la-Zouch “not only because the Hastings family esteemed him as a worthy pastor but also because he was a kinsman” (107). 41 Quoted in Haigh, 421, 409. 42 “The Fairies’ Farewell: The Masque at Coleorton,” RES 46 (1995): 333–51. 43 These poems are printed in my earlier book, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), 103–4. They can also be found in ESL, H20. Bellany and McRae also refer to another copy of this work, Cam. MS Add. 29, f. 18. 44 Knowles, “Marston, Skipwith,” 172, remarks: “The appearance of Goodyer’s work in Skipwith’s commonplace book, and Skipwith’s poetry in Goodyer’s hand (or one closely related to it) points to the tight-knit nature of this gentry community and illuminates the circulation of poetry amongst them.” 45 “‘Love-song weeds, and Satyrique thornes’: Anti-Courtly Love Poetry and Somerset Libels,” HLQ 69.1 (2006): 61–62. 46 This poem is printed in Daniel Starza Smith, “The Poems of Sir Henry Goodere: A Diplomatic Edition,” John Donne Journal 31 (2012): 99–123, at 120–23. 47 See Dennis Kay, “Poems by Sir Walter Aston, and a Date for the Donne/ Goodyer Verse Epistle ‘Alternis Vicibus,’” RES 37 (1986): 198–210, at 208. 48 Kay, 206, points out that this poem, which is found in Bod. MS Eng. Poet. e.37, p. 47, subscribed “Sr. W. A.,” and appears in no other British Library manuscript, was originally written by Sir Walter Aston as an elegy for Prince Henry. It appears that Henry Skipwith appropriated it for his own use, adding a couplet that reads like an allusion to the execution of Charles: “For that mischieuous and most unhappie stroke/hath now all honest harts asunder broke” (quoted in Kay, 207, n. 37). This sort of literary appropriation was common in manuscript culture. 49 This suggestion is made by Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 66. 50 Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 65. 51 There were editions of Harington’s Epigrams in 1615, 1618, 1625, and 1633. The Drayton poem on f. 95v (“I prethee leave, love mee no more”) might have been copied from the 1619 edition of that poet’s works, but Drayton was a friend of Sir John Beaumont and his work might also have circulated in manuscript in Leicestershire. 52 See Chapter 7 for a discussion of this verse circulation. 53 Hobbs, Stoughton Manuscript, xv. Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 64, associates the Skipwith manuscript not only with the Stoughton Manuscript but also with the following: Folger MSS V.a.125 and V.b.43; BL MSS Harley 6917–18 and Sloane 1446; and St John’s College, Cambridge MS 423. 54 There is an elegy for the Prince (“Hee that can write for teares and can but thinke” [f. 72v]) that appears in no other manuscript listed in the Folger Index.

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55 See Donne’s epithalamion (ff. 35–36) and Goodyer’s (ff. 37v–38). 56 See Corbett’s poem on Queen Anne, “Not not a quack (sad Poet) doubt yow” (ff. 91v–92) and the anonymous elegy for King James, “All that “have Eyes now wake & weepe” (f. 79). 57 See Sir John Beaumont’s three Buckingham poems on ff. 70v–72 and John Eliot’s poem and the anonymous poem on ff. 160v–61v. 58 See “On the kinge of sweden/1632” (“The youthe hearafter, when owld wives shall chatt” [f. 93r–v]). 59 On ff. 77–78 in Hand F (the same used to transcribe Beaumont’s “Bosworth Fields”). This piece appears in numerous manuscripts and in print: see the Folger Index https://firstlines.folger.edu/advancedSearch.php?val1=find+grace& col1=firstline#results (accessed 31 March 2020). 60 We know, from Donne’s 1614 letter to Goodyer, that the latter had a manuscript of Donne’s verse in his possession at that time. See John Donne, Letters to Severall Persons of Honour (1651), 196–97. 61 The English Wits: Literature and Sociability in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 62 See the text of this, as the thirtieth poem in Harington’s fourth book, in Gerard Kilroy (ed.), The Epigrams of Sir John Harington (Farnham, U.K. and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 220. 63 The manuscript also has a copy of Sir John Harington’s comic anti-Puritan piece, “Of Puritan wenches” (“Sixe of the weakest sexe & purest sect” [f. 126]). 64 This piece is found, with the title “A Character of the Peacefull Man” in BL MS Harley 6918, f. 90, and, with “humbly” substituted for “homely” in the first line, in the Yale Osb. MS, b.62, p. 136. This Thomas Aston may have been the parliamentarian in the Short Parliament who was a supporter of the conservative religious establishment and who left a parliamentary diary: The Short Parliament (1640) Diary of Sir Thomas Aston, ed. Judith D. Maltby (London: Royal Historical Society, 1988). He fought in the Civil Wars and died in prison after his capture by Parliamentary forces. See his biography in the ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/827 (accessed 2 March 2020). On the connection of the Skipwiths with the Astons, see Kay, “Poems by Sir Walter Aston.” 65 Horace’s second epode is the source of a large number of poems on the topic: see Maren-Sofie Røstvig, The Happy Man: Studies in the Metamorphoses of a Classical Ideal, vol. 1:1600–1700 (Oslo: Akademisk Forlag and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958). 66 This poem is reproduced in Chapter 10. 67 The first six are on f. 178, but f. 178v starts with the eighth. 68 For a discussion of this authorial mark, see James Knowles, “WS MS,” TLS (29 April–5 May 1986): 472, 485. Knowles, 485, points to documents in the National Archives by Skipwith that have the same authorial mark. 69 I mention the poems written by Sir William and Henry Skipwith in my earlier study, Manuscript, 196–97 n. 113. 70 As noted above, the whole section from f. 148 through f. 186v is done in Hand O/P. 71 I present the text of this poem and discuss it briefly in Manuscript, 198. 72 See the discussion of this alternate form of the sonnet in Chapter 10. This poem seems to break into three quatrains and a couplet-conclusion. 73 This poem appears in Bod. MS Eng. Poet. e.37, p. 47, subscribed Sir W.A., possibly Sir Walter Aston. There is a poem in Add. 25707 subscribed “T. Ast.,” who may have been part of the same family (“A peecefull mind

British Library MS Additional 25707 141 goes homely cladd” [f. 91]). That poem also appears in BL MS Harley 6918, f. 90 and Yale Osb. MS b.62, p. 136. 74 Henry might also have written “Madam God knowes my power is lymited” (f. 177), a unique, unascribed poem. This is quoted in Chapter 10. 75 Eckhardt, 233, says there are “[a]t least a dozen hands” in the manuscript. 76 There are “filler poems” to be found on the following folios: 14v, 22, 23v, 26v, 37, 45, 47v, 58v, 63, 64v, 89, 91, 97v, 99v, 103v, 110, and 148v.

5

Oxford University and Beyond: Folger MS V.a.345 and its Manuscript and Print Sources

Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.a.345 is a large quarto literary collection probably compiled around 1630 by a person educated at Oxford (possibly at Christ Church). Apart from its blank pages, it has some 315 pages of text with over 500 poems as well as a number of prose pieces.1 It was written almost entirely in a single hand on ruled paper that left space in top, bottom, and side margins. The final poem in the manuscript’s modern binding is a satiric epitaph on George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who died in 1628 at the hands of an assassin.2 What makes this collection unusual—and it is one of the largest surviving from the period—are two of its features. First, it is an example of the two-way traffic between the manuscript and print systems of literary transmission: like other contemporary gatherings of verse, it combines manuscript poetry from both the university and the country’s metropolitan center, but it also contains an unusually large number of texts taken from printed editions, especially published collections of epigrams, the verse form to which the compiler calls attention in several pieces. Second, it contains fifty-three poems that seem not to have survived either in print or in other manuscript documents.3

The Print Sources of the Manuscript Many English manuscript collections from the early-modern period contain poems copied from printed exemplars, illustrating the interactions between these two systems of literary transmission, but V.a.345 is unusual in the large number of texts copied from printed sources.4 The anthology stands midway between the many surviving manuscript collections that proliferated in the 1620s through the 1640s and the printed miscellaneous collections of witty verse that began with the publication of the continually expanding Wits Recreations and the other anthologies and miscellanies produced by enterprising publishers from 1640 through the Restoration period.5 The compiler of V.a.345 was especially interested in gathering epigrams from a wide variety of published collections as well as from manuscripts containing pieces by Sir John Harington,6

Oxford University and Beyond 143 Sir John Davies, Thomas Bastard, John Heath, Henry Parrot, Samuel Rowlands, William Gamage,7 Henry Hutton, John Taylor, Thomas Freeman, Richard Zouch, and Henry Fitzgeffrey.8 One of the greatest epigrammatists of the period, the Neo-Latin poet John Owen, is represented in the collection by several translated pieces (pp. 238–40), in many instances in the only surviving manuscript copies. There are other printed sources used by the compiler—for example, William Browne’s Britannia’s Pastorals (1616 or 1625), from which five poems are derived,9 Robert Jones’s Ultimum Vale (1605),10 Thomas Combe’s translation of Guillaume de La Perrière’s Le miroir politique as The theatre of fine devices (1614),11 and the 1625 broadside, A delicate new song, entituled, Sweet-heart, I love thee.12 Some of the poems drawn from print sources appear to be the only copies to be found in the manuscript remains of the period,13 though most are reproduced in at least a couple of other scribal copies, and some in very many. There are many prose items in the collection, at least one of which is copied from a printed source: the compiler transcribed the old short pamphlet by Sir William Segar, The Blazon of Papists (1587), including the prose prefatory letter to Queen Elizabeth and its two poems.14 The satiric letter composed by Anthony Weldon, “A Description of Scotland” (pp. 37–42), written on the occasion of King James’s trip to Scotland in 1617, though later printed, was undoubtedly copied from one of the many manuscript copies in circulation.15 Other prose pieces in the collection were evidently copied from manuscript sources: on pp. 246–68 there is a series of medical receipts (a not uncommon feature in personal miscellanies); on pp. 184–218 forty-five of John Earle’s characters were transcribed and elsewhere in the manuscript we find three separate characters, “A Character of a wife” and “An Attorney” on p. 181 and “An idle gallant” on p. 269; there is a witty story about a parson and some drunkards on p. 180 from an unknown source as well as “A law case” (p. 35), a bawdy jeu d’esprit, both the kind of material found in contemporary jest books.16 The compiler’s fascination with epigrams is reflected in several poems titled “Ad Lectorem.”17 The first of these poems to readers was copied from Henry Hutton’s Follie’s Anatomie: or Satyres and Satyricall Epigrams (1619): Reader I must present you with a shrimp fish I hope you’le make no bones, to tast this dish, It is no carpe, unlesse you giv’t that note, Which if you doe, I wish t’were in your throate18 (p. v) Another poem addressed to the reader defends the composition of epigrams:

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Single Manuscripts in Social Environments Pardon mee (kinde reader) though now & than I shew my selfe to bee a very man That Epi-grams does write, and ‘tis knowne wel For wanton jests they beare away the bell. Then when lascivious rimes, you heer shal see Impute them to the Epigram, not t’me. (p. v)19

The last lines paraphrase a line from Martial’s fourth epigram of his first book along with its translation in an English couplet: Lasciva est nobis pagina vita proba My lines are petulant, t’is true My life is chast, I’le warrant you. (p. v) “Petulant” is a strange rendering of “lasciva,” which should translate as “wanton,” “licentious,” or “playful.” In any case, the allusion to Martial’s defense of epigram-writing makes sense here, especially since it is followed by another poem “Ad Lectorem” that asserts the recreational and psychologically healthful value of epigrammatic verse: Some may perchance account my time mispent And mee unwise to write such things as these But let them know my deed Ile ne’re repent Twas not for profit but my selfe to please For though most profit gaines most commendation Yet sometime must be spent in recreation He that most busied is, somtime will finde As interims freed from serious affayres Wherein to recreate his dulled minde Not able to endure continual cares The vilest miser he that never spares To search and scrape for gold, hath in his fashion Seasons selected for his recreation Then let not any this as idle deeme Whose only end was idlenes to shun Lest being more busy they most idle seeme Condemning, never thinking why twas done o But if such Momistso hither needs wil come fault-finders This is my answer to such peevish elves I laugh to see them selves displease themselves (p. vi)

Oxford University and Beyond 145 Four additional lines written in smaller script, and later deleted, follow. They are a John Taylor poem addressed to Sir Rowland Cotton in The Nipping or Snipping of Abuses (1614) (sig. I2v): To read to like to laugh I give20 you this desiring pardon where theres ought amisse When graver matters trouble not your head With [former] favour [let my lines be] reade21 Together these poems to readers, a recurrent feature of published epigram collections, highlight the importance of epigrams as a body of verse that readers and collectors in the period found irresistible.22 In the midst of these poems addressed to readers is an academic poem found also in another manuscript, where it is titled “A scholar” (Bod. MS Eng. Poet. f.10, f. 89). At some point someone scored through its lines: My wits my wealth my learning is my lands My gownes my goods, my bookes for buildings stand Arts are my acres, tongues my tenements, Pens are my ploughes, my writings are my rents. (p. v) Impoverished, gowned university students could take pride not in the real estate they owned but in their books, their learning, and their writing—that is, in their cultural capital. Some of the epigrams in the collection were recorded from particular published books in pairs or clusters. For example, on pp. 52–54 there is a cluster of epigrams by John Heath (originally of New College, Oxford), taken from The House of Correction: or, Certayne Satyricall Epigrams Written by I. H. Gent. (1619): “In Ducum” (“Ducus keeps house, & with reason stands” [p. 52; House, sig. A4]) “Omne simile non est Idem” (“Together as we walkt, a friend of mine” [p. 52; sig. A4v]) “On a Shoomaker” (“What bootes it thee to follow such a trade” [p. 52; sig. A5]) “In Pratum Jur: Cons.” (“I asked Pratus what was his profession” [p. 52; sig. B3v]) “On Captaine Drake his voyage” (“Some think it true whilst other s[e]me to doubt” [p. 52; sig. B3v])23 “On the Six Cases” (“No. Nanta was nominated for a whore” [p. 53; sig. B6v]) “Peters trouble” (“Peter is troubld with a froward wife” [p. 53; sig. B7v])

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Single Manuscripts in Social Environments “In Luce’s maintenance” (“He that takes paines shal get the proverb goes” [p. 53; sig. B7]) “To the Gentlewomen Painters” (“Apelles famous for the art of painting” [p. 53; sig. B8v]) “Epitaph on a foot man” (“This nimble foot man can away from Death” [p. 54; sig. C3r-v]) “Ex abundantia cordis os loquitur” (“The mouth speakes from the abundance of the hart” [p. 54; sig. C7]).

These poems overlap with a cluster of poems from another epigrammatist, Henry Fitzgeffrey, whose Satyres: and Satyricall Epigrams (1617) seems to have been the source: “In cornutum” (“one told his wife a harts head he had bought” [p. 52; Satyres, sig. C4]) “In Sextum” (“Sectus 6 pockets weares, 2 for his uses” [p. 53; sig. C7v]) “Lucus long hayre” (“Lucus long locks down to his shoulders wears” [p. 54; sig. C4v]) “Clyms account” (“Clym calls his wife, and reckning al his neighbors” [p. 54; sig. C8v]) “Felo & his Poetry” (“Felo that lately kist the Goale hath got” [p. 54; sig. D4]) “In Philipum” (“Cal Philip flat nose straight he frets therat” [p. 55; sig. D8]). The next poem in the sequence, “Rosa omnibus olet” (“Rosa is fayre, but not a proper woman” [p. 55]), incorrectly marked “Fitzjef[frey]” in the margin, is by another epigrammatist, Henry Parrot, who published collections of epigrams in 1608, 1613, and 1615. The scribe of V.a.345 seems to have copied this and three epigrams from Henry Parrot’s The Mastive … Epigrams and Satyrs (1615): Irati Implacabiles” (“Dick with his Dogs in such an out rage grew” (p. 55; Mastive, sig. C1]) “Vera filia patri” (“Why strives young Galatea for the wall” [p. 55; sig. C2]) “Nuptiae post nummos” [p. 55; sig. C4]). Later in the manuscript, the scribe copied nine more epigrams from Mastive: “Infirmis experientia” (“Old Cressus stands upon his tackling stout” [p. 174; sig. D2v]) “Plus scelera Nocte” (“Sil for his wives sake much Tobacco sels” [p. 174; sig. D4v])

Oxford University and Beyond 147 “stante te stabit uxor” (“Lippus the bankrupt hath a bounsing wife” [p. 174; sig. E2v]) “Arbora per fructus” (“Fine mistres Phipps a proper friend of mine” [p. 174; sig. E4]) “Nimis docuit Consuetudo” (“Old fucus board is oft replenished” [p. 174; sig. E4v]) “Non morbus, sed Dolor” (“A Doctor told his Patient Omphida” [p. 175; sig. F1]) “Subita, magis quarenda” (“Mat. with his man late sat on merriment” [p. 175; sig. F3]) “Prodit se lingua” (“A Country Butcher late with Oxen passes” [p. 175; sig. G3]) “Mens conscia recti” (“Ralph told his misris hee had done with her” [p. 175; sig. H1v]) These pieces are followed by five poems copied from John Taylor’s The Nipping or Snipping of Abuses (1614), the first marked “Taylor” in the left margin and the others “Idem.”: “Everything is pretty when tis litle” (“There is a saying old but not so witty” [p. 56; Nipping, sig. K1]) “I mean som what” (“One asked me what my melancholy meanes” [p. 56’ sig. K1v]) “Mistres fine bones” (“fine Parnel wonderfully likes her choice” [p. 56; sig. K2v]) “A wordmonger” (“Mans understanding’s so obnubilate” [p. 56; sig. K4]) “Plaine Dunstable” (“Your words passe my capacity, good zur” [p. 56; sig. K4v]). This run of epigrams ends with copies of two poems taken from facing pages of Samuel Rowlands’s The Knave of Harts (1611): “A censure uppon Gunshot” (“Where Archidamus did behold with wonder” [p. 57; Knave, sig. E1]) and “A plaine clowne & a knighte his sonne” (“A rich plaine Clowne having a knight to’ is sonne” [p. 57; sig. D4v]). In a later section of the manuscript, on pp. 171–75, there is a run of epigrams by Thomas Freeman, drawn, it would seem, from his Rubbe, and a Great Cast: Epigrams (1614): “Epitaph f[a]eneratoris” (“with usury and commons harmes” [p. 171; sig. D4]) “In Epitaphium pinguie minerva compositum” (“When Crassus dyed, his freindes to grace his hearse” [p. 172; sig. G1]) “In Critonem vocifenuntem” (“Good man (quoth a) knowing who I am” [p. 172; sig. D5])

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Single Manuscripts in Social Environments “Dii votis aspirate meis” (“All prayers for Jacobus, are, but mines” [p. 172; sig. D4v]) “Adorans [sic] substantiam et orans imaginem” (“I love my soveraigne, as good subjects should” [p. 172; sig. D4v]) “Alea Vina Venus” (“Four things in drinking breed our discontent” [p. 172; sig. E1v]) “Epitaphium in meretricis” (“Graves are gon on commonly wee see” [p. 172; sig. H2]) “In Bacchum” (“Of al the old Gods Bacchus is the best” [p. 173; sig. B2]) “In Gulielmum” (“Wil would have officers reforme wel one fault” [p. 173; sig. H3]) “In Elizabetham” (“Wee say the Iberians, the Belgians doe expresse” [p. 173; sig. K2v]).

Even in a medium in which epigrams were popular, along with the many epigrams of Sir John Harington’s, this is an extraordinary number of poems of that genre to have been taken from printed volumes.

V.a.345 and its Manuscript Sources Although Folger V.a.345 draws on print sources, it is also close to manuscript networks of transmission associated with the university, particularly to Oxford and to that hub of academic poetic production, Christ Church.24 The first poem in the original order of the manuscript is the piece beginning “Like to the damaske rose you see,” probably composed by the Queens College, Oxford author, Simon Wastell, though it is ascribed elsewhere to Frances Quarles and Michael Sparke.25 In addition to the three printed works in which this poem is found, copies of it also exist in many manuscripts, some with obvious Oxford provenance, suggesting that it circulated widely in university and other settings. V.a.345 shares many poems with such manuscripts as Bod. MSS Eng. Poet. e.14, Douce f.5, Don. d.58, Malone 19, and Ash. 38 as well as with two Ros. MSS, 239/22 and 239/27, some of which are Christ Church, Oxford collections.26 One of the pieces in V.a.345, a unique poem criticizing Christ Church poets for their supposedly inadequate elegiac verses on the death of Sir Henry Savile (d. 1622),27 uses the term “Christ church poetical fantastick Braines” (p. 87) to refer to the poets active at Christ Church (and in other Oxford colleges), whose work the compiler includes in his anthology.28 These pieces were written mainly in the 1610s through the 1620s by such poets as Richard Corbett, William Strode, Ben Stone, George Morley, Peter Heylin, Brian Duppa, Jeramiel Terrant, Edward Lapworth, Daniel Price, William Juxon, William Lewis, John Deane, Edward Radcliff, and Henry King. They include Ben Stone’s poem “Upon Mr Samborne Sheriff of Oxf[ord]shi[re]” (“Fy Schollers fy

Oxford University and Beyond 149 have you such thirsty souls” [pp. 14–15]); “On Sir Francis Stonner Recusant Shreif of Oxford The assize being on Shrovetuesday 1622” (“Stone rise againe and leave our sambornes sinn” [pp. 138–39]); a much-copied song about Dean Richard Corbett’s forgetting the text of his sermon because he was preoccupied with a ring King James gave him during his 1622 visit to Christ Church (“When the king and the court desirous of sport” [p. 68]); Peter Heylyn’s “A Satyre made against Mr Holydayes Technogam[i]a … presented before the kings Majestie at woodstock on Sunday 26 of Aug[ust] 1620 by The students of Christchurch” (“Whoop holiday, why then twil nere be better” [pp. 140–42])—transcribed along with “An Answere to the Satyre” (“Thou that as yet has no name of thine owne” [p. 142]), identified in one manuscript as written by Holiday himself;29 Corbett’s poem about the 1626 “Proctors Plot” (“When plots are Procters vertues, & the gift” [p. 23]); two juxtaposed academic poems by Corbett and Dr. Edward Lapworth on the 1618 appearance of the Great Comet (“My brother and much more hads’t thou been mine” [pp. 113–14]; and a unique copy of a poem, “Ile smother up no wonder, I must speak” [pp. 115–16]), that may have been a response to King James’s poem on the comet, also found in this manuscript, “His Majestie on the Comet 1618” (“Ye men of Britayne why gaze ye soe” [p. 143]). There is a poem addressed to King James from prison by John Clavell of Brasenose College, a highwayman who was found guilty in 1625 and was seeking a pardon he finally received, “Mr Clavils verses in prison” (“I that so oft have robd am now bid stand” [p. 15]).30 A comic epitaph written after the 1613 death of George Ryves of Balliol College, who “took away some of the university lands And afterward new Plaster’d the Schooles” (“Here lyes Dr. [Ryves] Baliol Colledge master/that broke the university’s head, & gave the Schooles a plaster” [p. 134]), is accompanied by a reply in the voice of the deceased: “If that I knew thee that wrot’st this in a bravery/ I would commend thee for thy wit, but jerk thee for thy knavery” (p. 134).31 One poem, which is found in at least five other manuscripts, is addressed to fellow scholars, warning them to keep to their studies as it mocks a supposedly promiscuous local woman: “Not upon Egerly the Carriers wife But uppon Egerlyes wife the carrier” (“Nine days are past & yet the wonders new” [pp. 225–26]). Some poems from the university context, however, look back several decades to events and persons at Oxford that left their mark on the collective memory of university students. One of the pieces, “On Sunnibank taken by Parret the proctor” (“A Sunny band in shade is seldome seen” [p. 287]), refers to a set of circumstances from the years 1545 and 1546: Simon Parott (d. 1584) was a fellow of Magdalen College in 1533–50, and served as proctor in 1545–46.32 Another piece looks back to early Elizabethan Oxford, “On Dene of Allsoules slaine with a Jugge by Benford” (“Heer lyes a man (but of such cruel Lot)”

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[p. 150]): the subject was probably Henry Denne, who was a Fellow of All Souls in 1564.33 There are both serious and comic epitaphs and elegies about Christ Church and other Oxford figures. These include the following: Corbett’s “On John Dawson Butler at C[hrist] C[hurch]” (“Dawson the Butlers dead although I think” [p. 147]) Ben Stone’s “Upon a butler’s Death named Owen” (“Why death did honest Owen catch?” [p. 48]) “An Epitaph upon mr Prick of C[hrist] C[hurch]” (“The 13 of the month of december” [p. 9])34 Also included is an anonymous “Ep[itaph] on a young man”: “Short was thy life yet livst thou ever/ Death hath his due yet dy’st thou never” (p. 5).35 Like many other pieces in this manuscript, this last item, written in a smaller script, is used as filler material at the bottom of a page. The compiler seems to have been particularly interested in medical figures at the university, whose deaths are mourned in poems that do not appear in print and are not found in many other manuscript collections. There are several poems occasioned by the 1626 death of James Vaux, who was a Professor of Physic: “On Mr Vaux, dyed the last 1626” (pp. 266–67) (a unique copy), another poem on the same topic (p. 277), “Memoriae Sacrum To the memory of the most worthy and happy professor of Physick, Mr James Vaux of Marston, a Comparison between him and Aesculapius” (“Great Aesculappe” (303–4), “In obitum Eiusdem” (“When first I hard thy fame then I began” [pp. 394 and 314–15]). There are also copies of elegies for Dr. Samuel Johnson: “An Epistle on Doctor Johnson” (Why should we feare to entertayne” [p. 18]) by E. Radcliffe” (a unique copy), for Dr. Bartholomew Warner, who died in January 1619, “In obitum Doctoris Varner” (“Enraged death! why dost tho strike the best?” [p. 125]), and for Doctor Allworth of New College, Regius Professor of Medicine (“Wake yet mine eyes though yet scarce slept at all” [pp. 72–73]), the last by Dr. Edward Lapworth (1574–1636), who was himself a physician-poet.36 In fact, the interest in medical doctors spills over into a London setting in a libel (entitled elsewhere “Of London physicians”) about doctors who, among other kinds of bad behavior, sexually molested their female patients, “In quosdam Doctores medicos” (“Now Ladyes glad yee” [pp. 139–40]).37 The same irreverent attitude toward physicians is reflected in another poem in the collection, one that appears in only one other manuscript (Ros. MS 239/22, p. 8b) and may have been drawn from a 1620 printed book, A Description of love with certaine [brave] epigrams, elegies, and sonnets (sig. C1):

Oxford University and Beyond 151 In medicos huius senile [sic] Twixt former times and ours there is great ods For they held men that were Physitians gods O: what an happy age live wee in then That have such gods before that they be men. (p. 103) Looking beyond the university precincts, the compiler, like other Oxford students and writers, collected pieces about contemporary political events: V.a.345 has poems about the death of Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury in 1612,38 the jailing of too-outspoken MPs from the 1614 “Addled Parliament,”39 the Somerset-Howard scandal of the mid-Jacobean period,40 the death of Queen Anne in 1619,41 the political falls of the impeached Sir Francis Bacon and Sir Giles Mompesson in 1621,42 the failure of the project of the “Spanish Match” (of Prince Charles to the Infanta) in 1623,43 and, as noted earlier, the death of the duke of Buckingham in 1628. Many of the poems collected from Oxford and from other all-male environments are, not surprisingly, misogynistic and/or bawdy. This anthology includes the piece in the manner of Nashe’s famous erotic elegy, “The Choice of Valentines, “A Coy Mistres” (the poem beginning, here, “Nay pish, nay pu, In fayth but will you? Fie” [pp. 7–8])44 and the phallocentric poem that is found in three other manuscripts in versions up to twenty-eight lines long: Ridle me ridle me what is this Jack holds in hand when he doth pisse A. It is a kinde of pleasing thing, A pricking & a peircing sting, It is Venus wanton wand It hath no legs & yet can stand A batchelours button throughly ripe The kindest true tobacco pipe It is the pen that Hellen tooke, To write in her two leaved booke, Tis a prick shaft of Cupids cut Yet some doe shoot it at a butt, And every wench with her good will Wil keepe it in her quiver stil, The fayrest she that ere tooke life For love of this became a wife (pp. 47–48)45 Someone, probably not the original scribe, has scored through phrases in four of the lines, a form of censorship practiced widely through this

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collection, where many portions of poems as well as some whole poems were scored through or X-ed out, either by the main scribe himself or by another user of the manuscript—for example, the eight-line bawdy piece, “A rustick swaine was cleaving of a block” (p. 27), each of whose lines is scored through. Immediately following the comic epitaph for Mr. Prick of Christ Church, there is “An Epitaph on a whore”, a poem later scored through in the manuscript: Here lyes her inclosed in brick o That living burnedo many a prick, infect with syphilis I pray thee therefore, for her greater honor Pull out thy prick and pisse uppon her (p. 9)46 There is a similar nasty satiric epitaph “On Nel” (“Under this stone lyes lusty nel” [p. 28]). Another bawdy poem spells the work “prick” in the first letters of its five lines, which were later deleted: A medecine for the greene sicknes A mayden fayre of the green sicknes late Pitty to se perplexed was full sore Resolving how to mend her bad estate In this distresse Apollo did implore, Cure for her ill the oracle assignes, Keepe the first letters of these severall lines (p. 47)47 The female desire for wedlock and fear of the first sexual experience are the subject of a dialogue poem between sisters: A Dreame 1 Sister. Methought as I lay slumbring on my bed No creature with mee, but my maydenhead 2 Is it a creature? 1 Some men say tis Begot ith’ey & conceived in a kisse Some say’ts a pleasing nothing, but I wot Out of that nothing something is begot But lying thus alone as wee mayds use Methought I dream’d (somtimes we cannot choose[)] And in my dreame methought I had much wrong

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2 1

2 1 2

Being so neat should ly alone so long With that a gallant courted me twice or thrise Twas vertue to say nay but to be nice, Agreed not with my humor, but he stood so long a wooing I rather might could have wisht, hee had been doing Some other busines, but at length we agreed Twere strange if earnest sutors should not speed of what agreed you on our wedding ringe Time place and howre, indeed on every thing The time appointed and each thing in frame I thought each houre an age until it came, Welcome it is, Lord how I sweld with pride To be drunk to by the name of mistres bride Musick spoke loud, no delicates were scant Yet stil methought there something was, did want For women say theres somewhat in a man That wives doe love, & brides may long for’t then, Long lookt for’s come at last, to bed we goe I would to god that I had dream’d so too my bed mate turn’d & as I would have spoke I sweat with feare & in that feare I woke oh it would vex a saint my bloud would burne To be so neare and misse so good a turne./ (pp. 153–54)

This piece is found in six other manuscripts, but in no printed volumes.48 One of the bawdy poems, which presents itself as a kind of carpe diem piece about a “coy mistress,” is actually a poem depicting a rape: A Coy Mayde A man there was that once a mayde did finde In a by place most fitting to his minde He straight embract her in his armes and swore That he would kisse her, and doe somthing more, But shee resists and threatens that if hee Did ravish her, he hanged sure should bee. Yet he desists not, but stird with youthful heate One while doth feare her, then againe entreate His prayers nor ^&^ his threats could doe noe good With foote with tooth and nayle, shee him withstood. He raging much because she was so coy Sayd, thou mad wench thou dost thy selfe anoy Then drew his sword & swore by yea and nay

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Single Manuscripts in Social Environments If shee’d not quickly yeeld hee’d goe away goe away With that sad word shee being terefy’de, < > sayde Doe what you wil, but know you force a mayde (p. 270)

“Coy” is hardly the appropriate term to use for a woman resisting an armed sexual molester. One of the interesting juxtapositions in this manuscript is between this piece and the next poem, Lady Cheke’s feminist rejoinder to Sir John Harington’s much-copied epigram “Of a certain Man” (“There was not certaine when a certain precher” [p. 170]).49 In this collection, the poem is an incongruous juxtaposition with the previous one. There are many explicitly misogynistic pieces in the collection. These include “Of women” (p. 27),50 “A Shrew” (p. 46), “In disprayse of women” (“Oh heavenly powrs, why did you bring to light” [p. 58]),51 “A Song in disprayse of women” (“Come Eccho the I sommon” [p. 67]), “Of a woman” (“Commit thy selfe into the winde” [p. 168]), and “If yee that Lovers bee, and love the amorous trade” (p. 291).52 Immediately following a poem about choosing a wife, “A Wife” (“Might I a wife choose pleasing to my minde” [p. 34]), there is a bawdy prose item comically treating sexual conflict between a man and a woman in legal language and, like Shakesepare’s Venus and Adonis, through the use of a metaphoric sexual topography: A law Case A Gentleman & a Gentlewoman held plea for tayle land,53 he su’d her in the common place, uppon a firme downe, the lands in variance were called rough grove plash meade, & bushy close, in a deep vally in the parish of Buttockberry in the Country of Hairford, the matter in controversy was to be tried in hilary terme, the gentleman fearing his evidence would be too hard for hers, prayed a day of parlee, the gentleman took with him 3 of his wayting men nak’t, because it should not be counted a riot, in the pasture aforesayd twixt two banks And a cleft he him selfe in proper person without forcible entrance drawe a stake hard downe in the middest, whereby his long tarriing he burnt his evidence, Now the question is how he shal recover his evidence, being the First suer. (p. 35)

Oxford University and Beyond 155 What follows this is a long misogynistic poem that was published, in a version more than twice the length of this manuscript one, as a ballad: An invective against women. There is a certaine kinde of scurvy creature Which by a foolish name men cal, a woman A pox upon that filthy old whore nature That ere she bore this monster to undo man Many have wondred how it came to passe But hark you now Ile tel you how it was When first she brought out man her son and heyre The Gods came al one day to gosip with her, Her husband Genius proud to see them there Drunk healths apace to bid them, welcom thither, Til drunk to bed they went & in that fit, o They got this second childe, this femal chito, whelp The privy counsel of the heavens and planets, Whose wisdomes governes al th’affayrs on earth Held divers consultations in their senats, What should becom of this prodigious birth, At length agreed to give these strange formalities As strange effects, & correspondent qualityes, Saturne gave fullennes, Jove soveraignty Mars cruel hat wrath & unappeased hate The sun a gairish look, and wandring ey, Venus delighte and lust, unsasiate, Mercury deceipt, & deepe dissembling gave her The moone unconstant thoughts stil apt to waver Thus furnisht into the world was brought This uncouth creature monstrous beast cald woman Nature affrayd her husband should have thought That she had playd the whoore and borne to common Desird Lucina from the sight of Genius, Safe to convey her to her old freind Venus Venus wel skild to make a by escape o Sent it to Olebrono amongst the fayryes Oberon She finding it now growne a pretty ape Wanton and merry & ful of mad vagaryes She brought it home and gave it to her son To be his play mate and companion, He pranckt it up with fardingaleso & buskso ohooped petticoats o linen cloth o o o With ruffs, rebatoes shapperoones & wires a stiff large collar o hoods

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Single Manuscripts in Social Environments With poudring paintings, periwigs & muffs Italian, Spanish, french & dutch attires Thus was it borne and bred this puppet baby And this is it, which now we call a Lady. (pp. 35–37)54

Like many other texts from the period, this one criticizes woman’s sexuality and attraction to cosmetics and fashionable attire, taking aim at women in the higher strata of society. Like other poetry compilations made by members of the Oxford community, V.a.345 incorporated both older and contemporary verse from the larger society. It has a copy of the widely circulated poem by the imprisoned Babington Plot conspirator, Chidiock Tichborne, “My prime of youth is but a frost of cares” (p. 284). There are several poems by or attributed to Sir Walter Ralegh: “What is our life?” (p. 14), “Even such is time” (p. 32), the satiric epitaph for Sir Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury (“Here lyes old Hobbinol” [p. 110]), “Goe soule the bodies guest” (pp. 176–77), and “On the Lord Noel” (“The word of denial with the letter of fifty” [p. 277]). Popular poems by Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Henry Wotton, Francis Beaumont, Joshua Sylvester, Robert Southwell, Sir Robert Ayton, William Drummond of Hawthornden, and Ben Jonson are also included.55 So too are two poems by Shakespeare: Sonnet 2 and the epitaph on the money-lender Sir John Combe (“Ten in th’ hundred by the Lawes you may have” [p. 232]). The former is the most copied of the sonnets in the manuscript system.56 The collection has also William Basse’s elegy on Shakespeare (“Renowned Spencer, ly a thought more nigh” [p. 74]).57 Increasingly popular in manuscript collections of the 1620s in advance of the posthumous publication of his verse in 1633, John Donne is a notable presence in this compilation both as a writer, as a literary model, and as a prominent contemporary. At the bottom of p. 106 in the manuscript is the note “John Donne, Anne Donne, undonne at London,” referring to the immediate disastrous consequences of his elopement and marriage to Anne More in 1602.58 Several of Donne’s canonical poems are included in the compilation in whole or in part: the epigram “Uppon a criple” (“I can neither go nor stand the criple cryes” [p. 6]) “The Broken Heart” (p. 75), “Loves Deity” (p. 146), “Loves Dyet” (pp. 146–47), and one stanza of “Break of Day” inserted in another piece (“Ly stil my deare why doest thou rise” [p. 237]).59 One finds an elegy dubiously attributed to Donne, “At the Departure of his mistres” (“Since she must goe and I must tarry com Night” [pp. 88–89]). There are poems misattributed to Donne in this manuscript: “A mistress Dr Dun” (“Her for a mistres faine would I injoy” [p. 98]) (by William Strode), “To A Letter” (“Fly paper, kiss those hands, whence I am bar’d of late” [p. 131]), Henry Wotton’s “Happy is he borne & taught” (p. 63), “Dr Dunne, on the death of his

Oxford University and Beyond 157 Mrs” (“Is death so great a gamester, that he throwes” [pp. 82–84]) (by William Browne). There is a piece (beginning “The man and wife that kinde and loving are” [pp. 44–45]) that imitates Donne’s “A Valediction: forbidding mourning” and includes an illustration of that poem’s famous compass figure.60

Rare or Unique Poems in V.a.345 Folger MS V.a.345 contains fifty-three apparently unique copies of poems (see the Appendix). These include love lyrics and songs (a genre the compiler probably found especially congenial),61 witty epigrams and epitaphs, poems about individuals with whom the compiler may have had social relations, and some obscene pieces. Some of them, perhaps, were written by the compiler. One of the unique songs is the following piece in five numbered stanzas: A Song. 1 My mistres fayre is fit for Jove And not for mortal man. Shee is more freindly then the dove More kinde then Pellican. Though Phoebus with his glistering beames Do en seeme for to out face her Yet when fayre Luna shewes her ligte Her beuty doth disgrace her. 2 The stars were angry at her eyes Because they were so cleare For when she lookt up to the sky Shee puts them al in feare The Gods were greived at her looks She is so passing fayre And when shee moves her lips to speak Her breath perfumes the ayre 3 Her Lips as soft as any downe Her skin as smooth as marble Her voyce is musick if she sing In al the clouds to warble And when she walks the fields abroad The ayry spirits pursue her Each litle grasse she treads uppon Starts up again to vew her.

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Single Manuscripts in Social Environments 4 In al the pleasures that I see No comfort can I finde If al the worlde were mine in fee t’would not content my minde Nor al the water in the sea Wil quench my fires that burne Yet but one litle melting kisse Of hers wil serve the turne. 5 ‘Tis for no base lascivious Lust That lurks with in my breast Let him be bannisht and accurs’t That makes true love a jest ‘Tis pitty spoyle such modesty As doe her eyes prefer I love so deare and faythfully I scorne to strumpet her.// (pp. 227–28)

This piece is a competent literary performance in a popular form. In a run of songs on pp. 161–67, there are two apparently unique songs, the first a happy reminiscence about a former love, the other a misogynistic palinode: Once I lov’d a bonny lass well Shee was but tender of age I think her comely feature Most like the natural sage Her eyes as cleare as Chrystal Her cheekes were dimple round Her lips as sweet as sugar Her body did rebound Her pretty foot most neatly So wel I did It know. Her fingers white and nimble That passed any snow O Lord how she embraced me Betwixt her tender armes With clipping and with kissing Shee kept me from al harmes.// (p. 165)

Oxford University and Beyond 159 A Song Say I love, what is a womans minde That stormes and calmes like unto wavering winde Is it light or heavy, hot or cold Or was it made of unknowne mold Out alas out alas I am beguilde My mother hid it from me being a childe Say I love? What is a woman’s thought A mint of ice with fancy faining wrought. Is it active passive, bound or free Or makes it Sport with al it see Out alas out alas & I am beguilde &c Say I love, what is a womans minde hart Where none have al, yet al have a part Is it round or square, or soft or hard Or was it in the forging mar’d Out alas out &c Say I love? What are these femal sex That doe so much mankinde perplexe Is it earth or water, fire or ayre O what is it, makes them so rare. Out alas &c I Say I love, are any chastly true Some are no doubt, but they are very few Can their fayth and love last longe No, then they doe al others wrong Out alas, out alas I am beguil’d, My mother hid it from me being a childe.// (p. 166) One apparently unique poem is an answer to Thomas Campion’s song “What if a day or a month or a yeare”:62 The answer in another song What is all the hopes thy thoughts doe for sake What if the joyes of thy life is spent & vanisht Cannot the nighte when thy joy thou didst make Pleasures renew and call back, blisse being banisht Kisses sweet she will bestow, smiles & gracious favours Sugred words yea many more amarous behaviours

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Single Manuscripts in Social Environments Live my deare doe not feare Cupid in his blindenes Time may come Venus son will afford thee kindenes Loves but a boy & desires but a toy Soone sets on fire, but as soon the heat extinguisht Shal then a boy set on fire with a toy And shall the minde crave what were better relinquist fancyes force is but a flame, soon the Jewel fadeth when remorce ingendreth then repent invadeth Cease therefore any more to perswade affection But if not, well you wot, alls in your election (p. 137)

Other apparently unique songs are included in the anthology: for example, “Once I lov’d a bonny lass well” (p. 165), “Say I love, what is a womans minde” (p. 166), “To love and to be lov’d againe” (pp. 169–70), “My mistres fayre is fit for Jove” (pp. 227–28), “Fy my sweeting, why is thy love fleeting” (p. 302), “Death shall follow” (p. 305), and “Why should I stil perplexed bee” (p. 307). A unique hexameter pastoral ditty may also be a song, “The jolly sheppard swaines sought to be voyd of care” (p. 243). Another poem, “A Description of the nighte” (“When nights black wings hath banisht sols bright rays” [p. 168]) is noted in the text as “An answer to verses pa 27,” a much copied poem that begins “When sturdy stormes of strife are past”—the first letters of each line composing the question “When shal I lye with you?” (p. 27). There is an apparently unique love poem midway in the collection: When love and fortune both be blinde Beuty coy and fates unkinde How can I hope that they should see Comfort or cure my misery Entombed in a deep despayre My hart my hopes my wishes are Though Cupid woo me to embrace His mother in my mistres place An Hellen or an Hecate A Lucrece or Penelope Or al or any only shee Contenteth that tormenteth mee Had wanton Jove her feature seen Or in his dayes such a creature been He nere had loyterd heer below In cuckolding Amphytruo But spite of Juno’s Jelousy Made her his queen as wel as shee

Oxford University and Beyond 161 If Phoebus her abroad espy he cou He courts her with a greedy ey If she be shaded from his sighte In lowring clouds he vailes his lighte That al the worlde in sable black May with himselfe lament her lack This to this saint that heaven woos And earth adores mine affection bowes From whom no force of frowning fate Shal my devotion separate But though shee curse or kil me for’t Ile sacrifice to her my hart. (p. 158) The somewhat awkward prosody of the piece suggests that it was written by a poet of lesser talent, perhaps by the compiler himself. Another love poem presents itself as the work of a novice poet uncomfortable with his clumsy attempt at occasional verse: To his mistres Marvel not that I who stil, have been a stranger to al skil An alien to art should now, dare to write of such as you Though learning never made me fit, Love can pen without a wit That puts rigor in my quil, That creates a purer skil That makes me for the most part, Though unlearned I relish art Who could but a poet bee, that were to prayse or speak of thee/ They that worship the suns rise, would hate him if they saw thine eyes That like two stars al radiant heer, move in thy face a fairer spheare. Nature leaving al as poore Made thee the checker of her store And fashioning a beuteous shee, takes her example stil by thee I could be borne againe if < > I, were to be fram’d or fashioned by Thee, which since nature doth forbid, Bee thou a better nature, rid Mee of my wish, and mee refine, not like to the but rather thine./ (pp. 301–2) The author and/or scribe wrote the tetrameter couplets in this piece as internally rhymed octameter lines, a compression of the poem not mandated by the lack of space on the first page on which it is written. Some unique poems, however, seem to have been entered at the bottom of pages in available space as fillers—for example:

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Single Manuscripts in Social Environments Young man in thys ruff Thy life is but a cuffe A Childe is but a puffe An old man but a snuffe. (p. 22)

This kind of offhand wit is found in many manuscripts. The manuscript contains some unique aphoristic poems, such as a couplet on “Fame”: “Fame thus her true propriety discovers / Loves her contemners, & contemnes her lovers” (p. 137); the couplet, “He that is borne must dy, & if he dy to morrow/Looseth some dayes of mirth but months of sorrow” (p. 3); and the short reflective piece on death: If but one month thou wer’t to live, thou woulds’t cry Dos’t thou then laugh? When thou this day may’st dy? (p. iv) Another aphorism about death reads: “Our life and death doe differ in this one/Our life hath ever cares, but death hath none” (p. 156). A unique couplet about the pursuit of money and beauty is on p. 79: “Who gapes for gold, shal glutted be with drosse / Who loves for beauty, proves himselfe an asse.” The section of the manuscript that immediately follows a run of “characters” by John Earle (of both Christ Church and Merton College)63 begins with four apparently unique copies of poems, the first two identified as by “D: L:” or “Dr: L:” and the third and fourth by “Id [em.]”: “Thou glorious square of wonder which stands” (pp. 219–20), “Lend mee my primer for to find” (p. 220), “Muse not my muse what letter to commend” (pp. 220–21), “My D my Deare Dainty Delicious Dove” (pp. 222–23). The first is a piece “Uppon a picture of Christ made of fethers and placed in an arch at the counties off ______ by D: L:”64 and the second, third, and fourth of these are riffs on the letters “H,” “M,” and “D.” The likely writer of these pieces is Dr. William Lewis, provost of Oriel College, two of whose other poems are included in this manuscript: “Mr Lewis of Oriel uppon his love who dyed before she was married” (“Is she not wondrous fayre? O but see” [p. 59]) and “In defence of the Lord Chancelour” (“When you awake dull Brittains and behold” [pp. 127–31]).65 Other unique poems are on a variety of topics—for example, a poem on drinking water (instead of alcoholic beverages?), “Semel in sanivimus omnes or the strength of hot water” (“If poets whet their wits, and make them quicker” [pp. 158–59]). Two unique religious poems are included in the collection, a didactic piece each of the nine lines of which end with

Oxford University and Beyond 163 the word “Man,” “Whereof art thou so proude o Man” (p. 24) and a prayer of a repentant sinner: If teares had force to wash away my sinnes each ey Should rayne downe teares eternally But mighty oceans cannot make me cleane What can a teare doe then Yet but one drop of my deare saviours blood Wil cleanse me quite Tis it, tis only it can doe me good Can make my blood red soul look snowie white And he shed al the blood he had to set me free Wilt thou o father deny one drop to mee? (p. 232) The second is followed by a run of nine other unique pieces, a hodge-podge of poems of the kind found in other collections of the period: On a woman dying in childbed What dy in child bed? If thou hadst been tryde By humane lawes, as yet thou hadst not dyde Men are more merciful then soe, o then Pardon my wish, would death had eys like men (p. 232) Another of the same She was with childe and now desir’d shee mighte A midwife have to help to bring to lighte Her babe, that so a happy mother shee The happy offspring of her wombe might see When death a better midwife came & did deliver Her soul from ‘th body now to live for ever Then cease to weep for her shee is not dead But gently heer by death’s hand, heer brought to bed This is her chamber not her grave you see where shee lyes in since her delivery. Til that great judgment day, when she shal bee Church’t, and then come abroad eternally. (p. 233) On a Black Gentlewoman Much beuty’s hid, in those black hayres & eyne So have I seen the sun through clouds to shine. (p. 233)

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Single Manuscripts in Social Environments Another This of her may be sayd, though whitenes shee do lack shee’s one of Natures wel pen’d works bound up in Black. (p. 233)66 On a fayre woman The joyning of the white rose with the red ne’re seeke In the seventh Henry, but in her fayre cheek (p. 233) Another Paris would Venus sleight were hee alive And judge this face beutyes superlative (p. 233) Mistris May weller My rare jwell67 I cal her mine and may i’th way of honor Though others weare her, I may look uppon her. (p. 234) On the death of a Dog cald Tom Peacock Reader who ere thou art that walkest by Know that Tom Peacock buryed here doth ly. And al you dogs that passe to shew your moane Life up your legs & pisse against the stone. One thousand & six Hundred twenty five Uppon saint Andrewes day he was alive Then came in (Alas) the time of killing Porkers and bacon, & of Pudding filling, when death it seemes was mightyly mistaken And kild Tom Peacock up in stead of Bacon. (p. 234) On a witty Gentlewoman In her the worth of the nine muses see If ere they chuse a tenth, sure twil bee shee (p. 234)

There are some unique satiric and comic pieces in the manuscript. Two poems on whores are paired on p. 289: “On a whore” (“She hath as many tricks in store, as Venus had for Mars/Leander ne’re lov’d halfe so wel, as she does love a [tarse]”) and “To tel you of her trickes, t’would made a man to wonder.” In a collection with several poems mocking Welshmen, there is a unique piece entitled “Pole Davyes kindenes to his wife”:

Oxford University and Beyond 165 Pole Davy for to el end all strife, Riding before did sweetly kisse his wife, Methinks he was extraordinary kinde, Riding before to kiss his wife behinde. (p. 47)68 A unique anti-Scots poem was probably written around the time of the marriage of Sir Robert Ker to the divorced Frances Howard, “When Scotland was Scotland and England it selfe” (pp. 287–88).69 There is a unique nastily bawdy poem about a scholar who owed money to a creditor: “A man sent his sonne Dick for money to a scholler which he owed him, the scholler answerd thus”: To pay your sonne Dick I am unwilling He knowes not sixpence from a shilling Send to me your daughter Nel And I wil pay her as round as a bell. (p. 310) A unique satiric epigram on a supposedly unworthy man called “Quintus” satirizes him as a “nothing” and a “Bare one” (Baron?) (p. 287). There is a unique reply to “A Distich on the Lorde Cooke by Sir E[ward?]: Ho [by?]:” “by Sir John Herbert”: “Who bites a cooke and leaves his wonted grasse/of a proud Hobby may become an asse” (p. 149). Many poems written to social superiors in a language of social deference are scattered throughout the collections. Among them is a unique copy of an acrostic epitaph for Lady Frances Mildmay: An Epitaph on the Lady Francis Mildmay A mbitious death, could thy proud malice finde N o other purchase to content my minde E xcept this rare invaluable creature P eerles in vertues, and unmatcht in feature I see tis destin’de by the sacred powers T hat frost shal soonest nip the fairest flowers A nd that the choycest wighte must ever have P erforce a quick, and ^an^ untimely grave H ow is it els that this brighte beuteous dame O f a transplendent and unblemisht name N ow breathles lyes, which was the other day T he fairest flower seen in the Mildest may H er soul now sits on high, where beeing in honour E ternal joyes as handmaids wait uppon her

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Single Manuscripts in Social Environments L anguish not then, yee her parents deare A nd you her husband cease to shed a teare D eplore her losse no more yee children seaven Y our mother is not dead but lives in heaven. F aire sister to the late lost beuteous prize R efresh your dumpish hart and wipe your eyes A nd you the brethren be not over sorry N or greive for her that lives in endles glory C an sighes or groanes or teares imoderate E ither bring back her soul, or change her fate S hal mortals, though their friends are highly priz’de M ourne for them, when they are immortalizde. I ndeed tis vaine, then surcease these plaints L aments doe not avayle celestial saints. D Death that the worlde may know, thou hast done a crime M ay this verse live unto eternal time. A Lady lyeth heer in whom did ly dy Y outh vertue beuty, birth and modesty./ (pp. 309–10)

The subject of this poem may be Lady Frances Mildmay (1552–1602), who was the daughter of Henry Radcliffe, second Earl of Sussex, married to Sir Thomas Mildmay. Although Lady Mildmay was around the age of fifty when she died, the poem, addressed to her family members, treats her as someone who died young but who had seven children.70 Another unique piece laments the death, during the 1625 plague, of Lady Elizabeth Rudier: On the Lady Elizabeth Rudier who dyed in childbed at the ceasing of the plague I doe not wonder that the plague71 growes milde This sacrifice the gods hath reconcilde To men, a truce twixt nature’s drawn, & death Which thou hast purchast with thy dearest breath This sure was al at which the Gods did ayme And made the plague a Commet to the same Phebus doth now his feiry darts suppresse And every day our funeral piles grow lesse As if thy sacred presence Jove had wonne To place in our Horizon a new sun Which mighte mens bodyes, and infected ayre With a new breath, & his pure beame repayre

Oxford University and Beyond 167 Twas thy prophetick spirit else did see How death would triumph o’re mortality Therefore to pay the ransom of thy freinds Up straight to Jove thy sacred soul ascends Nor could he but accept this glorious prize Scarce to be equald ‘mongst the Dieties So we had al been swallowed in the grave And thou hadst liv’d hadst thou not dyd to save Yet least so pure a breath should with her dy And breath’s it in her fayre and lovely boy Which might from greife redeeme his fathers joy Thus our fayre Semele great Jove struck dead Yet spar’d the hopeful fruite of nuptial bed And Phoenix like in birth she did expire And at her death she proves a living fire (pp. 274–75)72 The unusual circumstances of the death of an another aristocrat are the subject of a rare poem in the collection, “On the Death of the Duke of Lenox who dyed in his Parliament robes” (“Awake (dull Brittaines) are your soules asleep” [pp. 280–82]).73 Other unique (either sincere or satiric) elegiac and epitaphic poems are found in the collection, such as “Death was the debt he was to pay” (p. 76). There are a unique riddle poem “A Ridle Mrs Mary Barkley” (“The month wherein the Phylomel delightes” [p. 168]) and a complimentary poem “On a Gentlewoman” (“See the face wherein loves dittyes curiously are writ” [p. 290]). The poem celebrating the marriage of Sir John Pakington and Frances Ferrers (“Behold two loving harts in one combin’d” [p. 134]), also suggests a personal relationship: Behold two loving harts in one combin’d And Hymen joyes to have his couples joyn’d Such lovly offrings make his altar flame Your harts the sacrifice do cause the same This fayre conjunction made by sacred oath Glads heaven joyes men, & makes you happy both May al your houres prove blissful, let time breed Endles perfection in your endles seed And powerful destiny protect the righte Belongs unto this hymeneal nighte That til the worlde disolve there want not one Sprung from a ferrers and a Packington. (p. 134)74

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Sir John Packington was the son of Sir John Pakington (1549–1624), a Christ Church man who was at Lincoln’s Inn in 1570 and became a courtier knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1572. These pieces, like so many other apparently unique poems in this manuscript, bespeak actual social relationships between their authors and addressees or referents. Elegiac and complimentary verse and peergroup recreational (usually comic or satiric) pieces were at home in the environment of manuscript circulation and compilation: later literary audiences and publishers might have valued some of these poems as examples of wit and sophistication, but a manuscript anthologist such as the compiler of V.a.345 was a necessary cultural agent allowing such ephemeral work to survive.

Conclusion Well educated, socially sophisticated, politically aware gentlemen carried over from their youthful university years into their later careers a taste for witty verse and prose: such writing was a mark of social distinction if not also of political affiliations. Many compiled and either themselves transcribed or hired professional scribes to produce anthologies of such material, some collections, such as V.a.345 containing very large bodies of material. Ros. MS 239/22, for example, has 425 pages and Bod. MS Ash. 38, 243 (mostly folio) pages. At some point, publishers saw the value of transferring such verse into print, not only in single-author editions but also in those printed anthologies and miscellanies that proliferated after the 1640 publication of Wits Recreations and The Academy of Complements: they were a significant publishing phenomenon through the Restoration period and beyond. They drew upon manuscript collections for their texts, and, as the published volumes multiplied, the personal compiling of manuscript poetry collections diminished (though they certainly did not disappear since handwritten texts continued to have a certain prestige and personal value). Much of what was left uncollected in printed volumes—a mass of anonymous verse and poems written for particular social occasions or to individuals close to their authors—remained buried in the manuscript remains of the period. V.a.345 contains a large number of these pieces, but many unique or extremely rare poems that did not get printed in their own time or later remain to be discovered, edited, and collected. Folger MS V.a.345 is important not only because it illustrates the two-way interaction of print and manuscript systems but also because its unique poems help us to define the broader field of writing in the period, one that the narrower world of print is less able to disclose.

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Appendix (First-lines of apparently unique poems contained in Folger MS V.a.345)

A man there was that once a mayde did finde Behold two loving harts in one combin’d Believe thou not a woman when she cryes75 Cheapside of late was very sick Death shal follow Death was the debt he was to pay Dost love? And art thou not belov’d againe Great Tacitus I must lament thy fall He that is borne must dy, & if he dy to morrow I cal her mine and may i’th way of honor I doe not wonder that the plague growes milde If but one month thou wer’t to live, thou woulds’t cry If poets whet their wits, and make them quicker If teares had force to wash away my sinnes each ey Ile smother up no wonder, I must speak76 In her the worth of the nine muses see Lend mee my primer for to finde Much beuty’s hid, in those black hayres & eyne Muse not my muse what letter to commend My D my Deare Dainty Delicious Dove My mistres fayre is fit for Jove Once I lov’d a bonny lass well Our life and death doe differ in this one Paris would Venus sleight were hee alive Pole Davy for to end all strife Quintus of late as was to me related77 Reader who ere thou art that walkest by Say I love, what is a womans minde See the face wherein loves dittyes curiously are writ She was with childe and now desir’d shee might Shee hath as many tricks in store, as Venus had for Mars The joining of the white rose with the red ne’re seeke The jolly Sheppard swains sought to be voyd of care The life is sure a death wherin wee live78 The month wherein the Phylomel delightes The strangest thing that ever I did see This of her may be sayd, though whitenes shee do lack This valiant champion whom ambition strove79 Thou glorious square of wonder which stands To pay your sonne Dick I am unwilling To tell you of her tricks, t’would make a man to wonder Vaux dead tis strange, sure hee new cast our Bell80 What dy in child bed? If thou hadst been try’de What is all the hopes thy thoughts doe for sake When nights black wings hath banisht sols bright day When Scotland was Scotland and England it selfe

Page 270 134 18 294 305 76 and 159 244 87 3 234 274 iv 158 232 115 234 220 232 221 222 227 165 156 233 47 285 234 166 290 233 289 233 243 168 168 48 233 98 219 310 289 266 232 136 168 287 (Continued)

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Where first I hard thy fame then I began Whereof art thou so proude Who bites a cooke and leaves his wonted grasse Why should I stil perplexed bee? Why should we feare to entertayne You ask and receive not, because you ask amisse Young man in thys ruff

Page 304 and 314 24 149 307 18 273 22

Notes 1 The original pagination of the manuscript (in ink), following a prefatory sixpage section, runs through p. 244, at the bottom of which are two lines of ornamental marks. What would be page 245 is blank. This is followed by an unpaginated twenty-three-page section of medical receipts, followed by a prose “character,” before the poetry anthology resumes on a page numbered 245. The rest of the manuscript only has the pencil numbering provided by the Folger Shakespeare Library, ending with page 290. There is a good physical description of this manuscript in Joshua Eckhardt, Manuscript Verse Collectors and the Politics of Anti-Courtly Love Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 254–55. See also the description of the manuscript in CELM http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/folger-v-a-300.html (accessed 19 March 2015). The Folger Shakespeare Library has facsimiles of ten pages of the manuscript publicly available at http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/view/ search?QuickSearchA=QuickSearchA&q=V.a.345&sort=call_number%2Cauth or%2Ccd_title%2Cimprint&search=Search (accessed 15 April 2020). 2 The last poem chronologically may be the fifty-second in the collection, “Upon Civil & common law by Mr. Zouch” (“Our Civil law it is a royal thing” [p. 25]), a piece from Richard Zouch’s comedy, “The Sophister,” published by Humphrey Moseley in 1639, but which was an academic play performed at either Oxford or Cambridge between 1610 and 1631—most likely between 1614 and 1624, according to G. E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, Vol. V: Plays and Playwrights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 1280. Several copies of the piece appear in manuscripts that probably pre-date the printing of the drama (BL MS Sloane 1867, f. 20; Yale Osb. MS b.200, p. 410; Bod. MSS Don. d.58, f. 37v, Douce f.5, f. 16v, and Tanner 465, f. 96v; Ros. MS 239/27, p. 185). 3 See a first-line index of these in the Appendix to this chapter. 4 An earlier collection, BL MS Harley 6910 also contains a large number of poems from printed sources. See Katherine K. Gottschalk, “Discoveries concerning British Library MS Harley 6910,” Modern Philology 77 (1979): 121–31. 5 See Adam Smyth, “Profit and Delight”: Printed Miscellanies in England, 1640–1682 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2004). 6 James Doelman, The Epigram in England, 1590–1640 (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2016), 143, has counted sixty-five epigrams by Harington in this manuscript. 7 It is noteworthy that Gamage’s collection of epigrams, Linsi-woolsie, Or, Two Centuries of epigrammes, was published in Oxford in 1613, but, the title page indicates, “to be sold by John Barnes dwelling neere Holborne Conduit” in London.

Oxford University and Beyond 171 8 Some of these poems may be from manuscript sources—for example, Sir John Harington’s epigram “Women the former verses, this may teach you” (p. 14), whose text differs from that found in Alcilia Philoparthens loving folly (1613), sig. M3v, the only printed text of the poem before 1634. 9 “Maydens ayd men” (“Maydens should be ayding men” [p. 154]), “On a Ring” (“Nature hath fram’d a Jem beyond compare” [p. 159]), and “Uppon a fayre woman” (“The powers above deny” [pp. 167 and 169]), a couplet from the poem beginning “True Fame is ever likened to our shade” (“Fame thus her true propriety discovers” [o. 137]), and five lines of the poem “Of Life” (“The life is sure a death wherin wee live” [p. 169]). The third from last of these pieces has the marginal note: “This is taken out of brittaines pastorals.” Cedric Brown, in a forthcoming study, argues that the compiler of V.a.345 was using the 1625 edition of Browne’s work. 10 “Goe to bed sweet hart, take thy rest” (p. 66). There are several textual variants from the printed text. 11 The poem “A looking glasse” (“A woman should and may wel without pride” [p. 283]) is taken from this source. 12 “Sweet hart I love thee, and deem no lasse above thee” (p. 77). 13 See, for example, the following: “There is a saying old but not so witty” (p. 56) from John Taylor’s The nipping or snipping of abuses (1614), Epigram 17, sig. K1, as well as Epigrams 18, 23, 36, and 37 from the same source; “A censure uppon Gunshot” (“Where Archidamus did behold with wonder” [p. 57]) and “A plaine clowne & a knighte his sonne” (“A rich plaine Clowne having a knight to’is sonne” [p. 57]), from Samuel Rowlands, The Knave of Hearts (1612), sigs. E1 and D4v; “Antidotum Caecilianum” (“When that rich soul of thing (now sainted) kept” [p. 107]), the first three verse paragraphs from Thomas Scot’s poem of the same name in Philomythie or Philomytholigie (1616), sig. L4r-v; several epigrams (#67, 74, 71, 72, 44, 35) (pp. 171–73) from Thomas Freeman, Rubbe, and a great cast: Epigrams (1614), sigs. D4, D5, D4v, H2, H3; four poems (“A wanton dame, that of her spouse repented,” “Old Crassus stands upon his takling stout,” “Sil for his wives sake much Tobacco sels” and “Lippus the bankrupt hath a bounsing wife” [pp. 173–74]) from Henry Parrot, The mastive, or young-whelp of the old-dogge (1615), sigs. C2, D2v, D4v, E2v; and “Of women” (“Women to men are equal every way” [p. 310]) and “On women” (“A slow soft tongue, betokens modesty” [p. 310]) from Robert Tofte’s translation of Benedetto Varchi, The blazon of jealousie (1614), 35 and 34. 14 “A Poem aenigmaticall uppon the Letter P” (“The letter P is most accurst I trough” [p. 96]) and “The Blazon” (“A Papist couchant is that kind of man” [pp. 97–98]), the latter’s sections copied out of order: the printed text lists the various papists as Couchant, Passant, Gardant, Variant, Salliant, Seminant, Volant, Rampant, and Pendant, while V.a.345 has Couchant, Passant, Guardiant [sic], Variant, Volant, Seminant, Sallaint, Rampant, and Pendant. These anti-Catholic, anti-papal pieces resonate in other items in the collection: “In fisherum” (“Fisher by beeing popes humble thrall”—from John Heath’s Two Centuries of Epigrams (1610), epigram 24 [p. 43]), “A Papist Creed” (“I believe in our God Pope father of all mischeife” [p. 37]), “On those that were killed at there Idolatrous service, the house falling Upon them at the Blackfriers in London” (“Goe to ye sons of Antichrist, confess” [pp. 117–19]), “On church who beat a fencer at all weapons” (“The fencing Gaul in pride & gallant vaunt” [p. 149]), “An Answere to the song against blackcoats” (“I have traveld North, & have traveld South” [p. 157]), and

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“Anagramme Rome per G Herbert” (“Roma tuum nomen quam non pertransiit orgam” (p. 156]). There is a copy, for example, found in BL MS Stowe 151, ff. 18–23. On this text, see Joseph Marshall, “Recycling and Originality in the Pamphlet Wars: Republishing Jacobean Texts in the 1640s,” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 12 (2000): 55–60. Marshall notes that many manuscript copies of the piece circulated and that printed versions were marketed in the 1640s, starting in 1647, as though they related to contemporary relations with Scotland. See, for example, A Banquet of Jeasts (1630). Eckhardt, 254, observes that, in the current binding, the manuscript’ first four unnumbered leaves have been moved from the back of the original manuscript. Although this poem is complete, there are two lines added then deleted in the manuscript. This somewhat resembles the first poem in the popular print collection, Wits Recreations (1640ff 1. To the Reader Excuse mee Reader, though I now and then, In some light lines, doe shew my self a man; Nor be so sowre, some wanton words to blame, They are the language of an Epigramme.

20 The printed text reads “send.” 21 This poem is found in a manuscript that shares many items with this one, Bod. MS Eng. Poet. e.14, f. 48v. The bracketed words are taken from the printed text because the deleted lines in the manuscript are mostly illegible. 22 See Randall Ingram, “Lego Ego: Reading Seventeenth-Century Books of Epigrams,” in Books and Readers in Early Modern England: Material Studies, ed. Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 160–76; and Lawrence Manley, “Proverbs, Epigrams, and Urbanity in Renaissance London,” ELR 15 (1985): 247–76. For a recent study of epigrams in the period, see Doelman, The Epigram in England, 1590–1640. 23 This seems to be the only manuscript copy of this poem. 24 See the discussion of Christ Church, Oxford poetry and its dissemination in Chapter 7. 25 See Microbiblion or The Bibles Epitome … by Simon Wastell, sometimes of Queenes Colledge in Oxford (1629), 512; Sparke’s Crumms of Comfort (1627), sig. N6-O1v, and the end of the printed edition of Francis Quarles’s Argalus and Parthenia (1629), 161, accompanied by a second piece (162) also ascribed to Quarles. 26 For example, V.a.345 has 117 poems in common with Eng. Poet. e.14, seventy-two with Douce f.5, sixty-seven with Don. d.58, and fifty with Ash. 38. There are, however, many textual variants. 27 The manuscript contains one of these poems, “Mr Marsh on Sir Henry Savil” (“Adored Ghost, or what ere doth remaine” [pp. 85–87]). 28 Some Oxford poems, in fact, survive only in this manuscript. See, for example, three William Lewis poems (“Dr. L. his H.” [p. 220], “on his M.” [pp. 221–22], and “his D.” [pp. 222–23]), and Edward Lapworth’s poem on the Great Comet (“Ile smother up no wonder, I must speak” [pp. 115–16]).

Oxford University and Beyond 173 29 BL MS Add. 78233, f. 10v. 30 See J. H. P. Pafford, John Clavell, 1601–43: Highwayman, Author, Lawyer, Doctor (Oxford: Leopard’s Head Press, 1993). 31 Joseph Foster’s Alumni Oxonienses … 1500–1714 (Oxford and London: Parker and Co., 1891–92), 3.1295, has the following information about Ryves: “Ryves, George, of Dorset, arm. NEW COLL., martic entry under date 20 March 1578–9, aged 19; scholar 1578–9; B.A. 12 Oct. 1582, M.A. 3 June 1586. B.D. 7 Nov. 1594, D.D. 2 July 1599, warden of his college 1599–1613, vice-chancellor 1601, chaplain to bishop of Winchester and canon 1598; licensed to preach 28 Jan. 1604–5; rector of Blandford St. Mary, Dorset, 1589, of Alverstoke, Hants., 1591, of Stanton St. John, Oxon, 1600; of Colerne, Wilts, 1606, and of Old Alresford, Hants, 1608; died June 1613 …” Hunt. MS 116, p. 94 identifies the subject as “Doctor Lilly Balliol College Master.” 32 Foster, 3.1149. 33 Foster, 1.394. 34 This poem and another epigram on a person at Christ College, Cambridge named Prick (“Apollo help me to rehearse”) were very popular. 35 In the copy of the poem in BL MS Cotton Julius F.11, f. 88v, the title of this last poem is “Uppon Thomas Owen Bachelour of Artes in Christchurch Oxon.” The poem appeared in the 1605 edition of William Camden’s Remaines … concerning Britaine, 2.55. 36 He matriculated at Exeter College in 1589, was admitted BA from St. Alban’s hall in 1592 and MA in 1595. See C. L. Kingsford’s and Sarah Bakewell’s article on him in the ODNB http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16066 (accessed 14 June 2015). Anthony Aylworth (1544–1619) was Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford from 1582 to 1597, served as a physician to Queen Elizabeth, and was buried in New College Chapel on 18 April 1619. See http://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/doctors/regius_professors/aylworth_ anthony.html (accessed 22 May 2020). 37 For the much longer version of this poem found in Ros. MS 1083/15 and for identifications of the doctors being libeled, see James L. Sanderson, “An Edition of an Early Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collection of Poems (Ros. MS. 186 [now 1083/15])” (PhD Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1960), 734–51. See Also Eckhardt, 173–74. 38 “Fayre Ladyes howle yee and cry” (p. 36) and “In obitum Ro: Cecilii. Sr wall: Rawleigh” (Here lies old Hobinol our shepherd while heere” [p. 110]). For a discussion of poems about Cecil, see Pauline Croft, “The Reputation of Robert Cecil: Libels, Political Opinion and Popular Awareness in the Early 17th Century,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser. 1 (1991): 43–69. 39 “The Counsaile by Comitting foure” (p. 96). 40 “On the Lady Carr” (“There was at court a laydy of late” [p. 290]). 41 “On Queen Anne, who dying in March, Was kept unburied til April, and Inter’d in May” (“March with the windes hath struck a cedar tall” [p. 110]). 42 For Bacon, see “Upon Sir Fr[ancis] Ba[con]” (“Within this sty heer now doth ly” [p. 25]), “On the Lord Chancelour” (“Great Verulam is very lame, the gout of go out feeling” [p. 127]), “Heer is francis Verulam Lord Chancelour God save him” (p. 127), “In defence of the Lord Chancelour” (“When you awake dull Brittains and behold” [pp. 127–31]); and for Mompesson, see “On Sir Giles Mumperson” (“The tottering state of transitory things” [p. 126]). 43 See “Dr Corbet of the Princes jorrney into Spain” (“I’ve read of Ilands floting and remov’d” [pp. 135–36]), “An Elegy on Mr Washington who attending

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The Prince dyed in Spaine” (“Hast thou been dead a month & can I be” [pp. 100–102]), and “His Epitaph” (“Knew’st thou but whose these ashes were” [p. 102]). 44 Usually this poem is entitled “A Maid’s Denial.” For a discussion of this poem, see Sanderson, “An Edition,” 10. For a list of the thirty manuscript and seven print appearances of this piece, see the Folger Index https://firstlines.folger.edu/advancedSearch.php?val1=Nay+pish&col1=firstline#results (accessed 15 April 2020). 45 This poem is printed and discussed in Ian Moulton, Before Pornography: Erotic Writing in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 49–50. 46 This poem is also found in Bod. MS Ash. 38, p. 173, where it reads: Heere lies Intomb’d within thes brickes On In hur tyme a lover of Pri[cks]: All you that pass by, doe hur that honor pull out you[r] bables and pisse uppon hur. 47 This poem is found in ten other manuscripts. Moulton, 47, prints the version found in BL MS Egerton 2421, f. 46. 48 Bod. MSS Ash. 38, p. 85, Eng. Poet. e.97, p. 184, and Rawl. Poet. 160, f. 157; Yale Osb. MS b.197, p. 144 and b. 356, p. 288; Folger MS V.a.162, f. 91v; and Hunt. MS HM 116, p. 30. 49 This poem, attributed to Lady Cheke, is also found in BL MSS Add. 15227, f. 16, 10309, f. 108v, 78415, f. 2, and Sloane 1792, f. 4v; Yale Osb. MS b.205, f. 48; and National Art Library MS Dyce 44, f. 72v. It is reproduced from the last of these in Steven W. May, Elizabethan Courtier Poets: The Poems and Their Contents (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 246. The earlier poem is accompanied by the marginal note on p. 170 “see the answere to this infra page 245” and the answer poem by the note “See quidam homo supra page 171.” 50 There is a cluster of five misogynistic poems of which this is a part, including three nasty satiric epitaphs for Lady Rich. 51 “In disprayse of women” is paired with an answer poem, “Blest bee you heavenly powers which brought to light” (p. 58). 52 The poem is titled elsewhere “The description of women” (Folger MS V.a.162, f. 58v) and “The definition of women” (Harv. MS Eng. 686, f. 32v). 53 This is a pun. “Entailed” means, according to the OED “The settlement of the succession of a landed estate, so that it cannot be bequeathed at pleasure by any one possessor; the rule of descent settled for any estate; the fixed or prescribed line of devolution.” “Tail” also means a woman’s sexual parts (or the male penis). 54 Sanderson, “An Edition,” 885, lists six manuscript versions of this poem and two print versions, the earlier being the broadside ballad, A womans birth, or A perfect relation more witty then common (1638). In most manuscript versions, the poem has forty-two lines (sometimes in seven six-line stanzas), while print versions are much longer (90 lines, 15 stanzas). He speculates that the author of the piece is William Basse and puts the poem in the context of the early seventeenth-century controversy about women, which produced many prose and poetic texts. 55 Bacon’s “The world’s a buble” (pp. 143–44), Wotton’s “Happy is he borne & taught” (p. 63) and “On the Queen of Bohemia” (“You meaner beauties of

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57 58

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60 61

the night” [pp. 148–49]), Beaumont’s “A charme” (“Sleep old man let silence charme thee” [p. 144]), Sylvester’s “To a Gentlewoman” (“Beware faire maide of musky Courtiers oathes” [pp. 292–93]), Southwell’s “Herods cruelty” (usually titled “Of the Blessed Saviour’s Flyght to Egypt”) (“Alas our day is forc’t to fly by night” [p. 70]), Ayton’s “Wrong not sweet Empress of my hart” (pp. 90–91), Drummond’s “The Five Senses,” here titled “Of the five senses by James Johnson” (“from such a face whose excellence” [pp. 59–61]), and Jonson’s “Cooke Lorell would needs have the devell his guest” (pp. 178–79) from The Gypsies Metamorphosed, “Drink to me only with thine eyes” (p. 286), and “A Lover” (“Kysse me sweete the wary love” [pp. 286–87]). See the discussion of Shakespeare’s sonnets in manuscript in my essay, “Shakespeare’s Sonnets and the Manuscript Circulation of Texts in Early Modern England,” in A Companion to Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ed. Michael Schoenfeldt (Chichester, U.K.: Blackwell, 2010), 185–203. The word “nigh” is usually “near” in other copies. Versions of this statement appear elsewhere. For example, Bod. MS Rawl. D. 859 has “John Donne Anne Donne unDon” (f. 158). The phrase was attributed to Donne in Walton’s Lives, but, as R. C. Bald notes, this was not until the 1675 edition, and it probably did not derive from the poet himself but rather from current gossip about him (John Donne: A Life [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970], 139). The whole poem has a title that identifies Donne as its author, “Dr. Dunne of his Mrs rising.” See First-Line Index of Manuscript Poetry in the Bodleian Library, ed. Margaret Crum (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 1. 519 (L353). Crum notes that the poem is printed in John Dowland’s Pilgrim’s Solace (1612). I print this poem and the images of manuscript pages on which it and the illustration appear in Manuscript, 155–58. See, for example, The song beginning “Last night me thought my true love I caught” (p. 24, also in BL MS Sloane 1965, f. 147); the long song beginning “Leander on the banks” (pp. 64–65)—later printed as “Leander on the Bay,” in The Marrow of Complements (1655), 169–71; Thomas Lodge’s “A Song” (“Now I see lookes are fained” [pp. 137–38]); William Strode’s “Amintas & Cloris” (“Cloris sate and sitting slept” [p. 147]); Richard Brome’s “A Song” (“Nor love nor fate dare I accuse” [p. 224]); “A Song” (“As I walked forth in one summers morning” [pp. 224–25]); “A Song” (“My mistres fayre is fit for Jove” [pp. 227–28]); Strode’s “A Song of the Caps” (“The wit hath long beholding been” [pp. 228–31]); “A Song of the Pedigrees” (“A beggar got a beadle, a beadle got a yeoman” [pp. 235–36]); Francis Davison’s song printed in both A Poetical Rapsody (1602) and Robert Jones, First Set of Madrigals (1607), “Love if a god thou art then evermore thou must” (pp. 243–44) (See A Poetical Rhapsody 1602–1621, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931], 1: 65 and 2: 118–20); “A Song” (“Fy my sweeting, why is thy love fleeting” [p. 302]); “A Ditty” (“Why should I stil perplexed be” [p. 307]); “A Song” (“Draw not neare unless you drop a teare” [pp. 307–8]), later printed in Poems … by … William Earl of Pembroke … [and] Sir Benjamin Ruddier (1660); and a long run of songs and ballads on pp. 161–67. Some of the songs recorded in this manuscript were obviously taken from printed songbooks and broadsides, such as John Dowland’s Songs and Ayres (1597), Robert Jones’s Ultimum Vale (1605), and Thomas For’s Musicke of Sundrie Kindes (1607).

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62 The Campion poem, which immediately precedes the “answer,” was very popular in both manuscript and print. See Campion’s Works, ed. Percival Vivian (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), 353, 377–78. 63 See John Spurr’s biography of Earle in the ODNB http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/8400?docPos=1(accessed 27 February 2015). Earle’s expanding collection of characters circulated freely at Oxford well before their first printed edition in 1628. 64 The picture of Christ made of humming-bird feathers is referred to in old guides to Oxford University. See, for example, The Oxford University and City Guide on a New Plan (Oxford: H. Slatter Printing Office, 1834), 95. 65 This piece about Sir Francis Bacon’s fall from power in 1621 was the most widely circulated of Lewis’s poems. I discuss poems by Lewis, and include the text of the poem on the feather-picture of Christ in “Poetry Outside the Literary Canon: The Rare or Unique Verse by Minor or Little-known Authors in EarlyModern English Manuscripts,” Études Anglaises 76.4 (Winter 2021): 347–68. 66 This and the previous poem may be related to the poem and answer set written by Henry Reynolds and Henry King—“A Blackmore Mayd wooing a faire Boy: sent to the Author by Mr. Hen. Rainolds” (“Stay lovely Boy, why fly’st thou mee”) and “The Boy’s answere to the Blackmore” (“Black Mayd, complayne not that I fly”), in The Poems of Henry King, ed. Margaret Crum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 151. 67 This is an anagram poem, of which there are many other manuscript examples. The note in the margin indicates the piece was written by “Dr Cham.” 68 There are versions of this poem printed in two later collections: Versatile ingenium, The Wittie companion, or Jests of all sorts (1679), 129, and The new help to discourse or, Wit, mirth, and jollity (1680) By W. W. Gent., 189. 69 It is reproduced from V.a.345 in ESL, E6 http://www.earlystuartlibels.net/ htdocs/index.html (accessed 15 February 2015) (pp. 254–56). 70 See the ODNB entry for Egremont Radcliffe, her brother http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/22979 (accessed 17 June 2015). See also the ODNB biography of her husband, Sir Thomas Mildmay in http://www. historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558–1603/member/mildmay-thomasii-1540–1608 (accessed 27 February 2015) and their 10 September 1599 marriage settlement in PRO DR 473/292, ff. 56–60. There is another candidate for the subject of this poem: Cedric Brown (personal communication) identifies her as Frances (née Radcliffe), Lady Mildmay (b. 1551, d. 1582) who married twice and had six or seven children by two husbands. 71 There was a plague raging in 1625, the first since 1610. The next was in 1637. See John Findlay Drew Shrewsbury, A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 313. 72 Lady Elizabeth Rudyerd, cousin of Lucy, Countess of Bedford and daughter of Sir Henry Harington, was married in May 1621 to Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, poet and parliamentarian. See The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman Egbert McClure, 2 vols. (1939: rpt. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979), 2.349n.5. 73 For a text of this poem and a discussion of it and one other poem on the topic, see James Doelman, “Two Poems on the Death of the Duke of Lennox and Richmond,” Opuscula: Short Texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance 1.6 (2011): 1–10. This piece is also found in London Metropolitan Archives MS ACC/1360/528, ff.14–15. 74 The ODNB biography of his father http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/ 21145?docPos=1 (accessed 1 March 2015) indicates that Sir John Pakington

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75 76

77 78 79 80

(1600–1624) married Frances Ferrers, daughter of Sir John Ferrers of Tamworth. Created a baronet in 1620, he was an MP in 1623–24. The first two lines of this poem resemble the “Song on Women” (beginning “Trust not a woman when she cries”) found in The Mysteries of Love & Eloquence (1658), 99. The Folger Indexhttp://firstlines.folger.edu/detail.php?id=82125 (accessed 27 February 2015) points out that part of this poem is in a manuscript in a printed book, Bod. MS Douce B.89: “Doctor Lapworth on the comet” (“The sun was now in Sagittary placed”). The author named is Dr. Edward Latworth. The name Quintus is used in satiric attacks on Sir John Davies. Quintus poems are found in Folger MSS V.a.97, p. 63, V.a.339, f. 225v, and V.a.399, f. 62. The second and third lines of this poem incorporate the couplet of the unique poem that begins “Our life and death doe differ in this one” (156). This poem, which is at the bottom of p. 98, is crossed through and does not appear in the Folger Index. This is an elegy for James Vaux of Oxford. There are other elegies for him in Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 206, p. 17 (“Farewell thou man of men! Our fruitless tears”) by “N. D.” and in Folger MS V.a.262, p. 51 (“Stay this grave deserves a tear”) by William Browne.

Part II

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating in Different Environments

6

“Rolling Archetypes”: Christ Church, Oxford Poetry Collections, and the Proliferation of Manuscript Verse Anthologies in Caroline England

Discussing the complex ways in which early modern texts circulated in the manuscript system of transmission, Harold Love used the term “rolling archetype” to designate “collections of related pieces” or the gathering of “separates” into larger units.1 He describes this process in relation to parliamentary compilations but he also notes that, as poetical “separates” moved from one compiler to another, they were combined and new material was added. In most cases, those who copied poems into personal manuscript anthologies were not transcribing pieces that came to them singly, but rather groups or clusters of poems loaned or passed to them by family members, friends, or acquaintances. Hence, many of the surviving manuscript collections from the period have sizeable overlaps in their contents, even, in some cases, a similar ordering of pieces. I focus here on some of the ways poetry originating in Christ Church, Oxford, in the early seventeenth century circulated within the university and moved beyond its precincts to be combined with texts circulating in a larger social world.

The Circulation and Collecting of Poems in the University Setting In early modern England, one of the most favorable environments for the production of poetry was the university. Students rhetorically trained from an early age in poetic composition in both Latin and the vernacular both wrote and collected verse, compiling either personal or group anthologies of poems of interest to them and their fellows. Although students at both Oxford and Cambridge engaged in practices of versecollection, translation, and composition, some colleges were noteworthy for fostering these practices. Of these, Christ Church, Oxford, in the 1620s, 1630s, and 1640s, perhaps, is the best example. This was due primarily to two factors: (1) the high percentage of students coming from Westminster School, whose Master, Lambert Osbaldeston, encouraged poetic composition2 and (2) the poetic activities of Richard Corbett,

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William Strode, George Morley, and other poets connected to Christ Church.3 Building on the work of Mary Hobbs, who has studied the affiliations among a group of manuscripts associated with Christ Church,4 I would first single out four of note: Westminster Abbey MS 41 (hereafter W41), BL MSS Sloane 1792 (S17) and Add. 30982 (A30), and Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.a.170 (F17).5 The Westminster Abbey manuscript is a poetical collection of some 115 pieces transcribed over three decades mostly by George Morley, who was at Christ Church from the late 1610s to 1648. It is a good place to begin to get a sense of the verse circulating in that academic environment. It contains many poems by Christ Church poets, and, given Morley’s role in tutoring undergraduates throughout the period, his collection was probably, as Mary Hobbs suggests, loaned to students who, from the early 1620s through to the late 1640s, compiled their own poetical collections.6 Assembled over some three decades, this anthology of verse contains nineteen poems by Richard Corbett, twelve by William Strode, twelve by John Donne, six by Ben Jonson, and five by Morley himself. About sixteen other poets are represented by one or two poems apiece: the other Christ Church poets we can identify are Henry King, Daniel Price, Benjamin Stone, and Jeramial Terrent. Reflecting the broad religious and political interests of many Oxford writers, the compilation contains several anti-Puritan poems, including Corbett’s attack on Puritan iconoclasm in “Of Fairford Windows” (f. 53v), political pieces such as a seventy-eight line version of “The Parliament Fart” (ff. 49v-50v) (about the reaction of the House of Commons to James I’s campaign for the political union of Scotland and England), a poem on the murdered Sir Thomas Overbury (ff. 51v-52) (in the context of the Somerset/Howard marriage scandal), and poems on the possible Spanish Match (“I’ve read of Ilands floating & removd” [ff. 12v-13v]) and Prince Charles’s 1623 journey to Spain (“All the newes that is stirring now” [f. 18r-v]). Morley’s poem on the death of James I (“All that have eyes now wa[k]e & weepe” [f. 49v]), James’s own elegy for his wife Queen Anne, who died in 1619 (“See the building where whilst my mistris livd in” [f. 39v]), and a poem on the death of Arabella Stuart (“How do I thank thee death & bless this hower” [f. 61]) signal an interest in the royal family, some of this verse coming to Oxford from extramural sources. But there are also parochial concerns represented in the contents of this collection: a fragment of a long poem on the 1626 Proctor’s Plot (“The plott was now growne ranck & needs must bleed” [f. 82v]); a popular poem about the recasting of “Tom,” the bell of Christ Church (“Bee dum, you infant chimes; thump not the mettle” [f. 24]); a ballad on John Bell, the beadle of Oxford University; a misogynistic piece by Corbett on the supposedly libidinous and ugly

“Rolling Archetypes” 183 Mrs. Mallet (“Have I renounc’t my faith, or basely sold” [f. 29v]). There are pieces in Latin, Greek, and French, some with translations. Some of the poems by either Oxford poets or by writers outside the university appear in a large number of manuscript collections. These include: William Strode’s “On a gentlewoman walking in the snow” (“I saw faire Cloris walke alone” [f. 47]) (which may have been the most popular lyric of its time) Morley’s “The Nightingale” (“My limbs were weary and my head oppressed” [f. 33v]) Morley’s epitaph on the 1605 death of the infant daughter of the king (“Within this marble casket lyes” [f. 48v]) Ben Jonson’s “The Body” and “The Minde,” two poems from his sequence about Venetia Digby (f. 34r-v) Walton Poole’s “If shadows be the pictures excellence” (f. 20v) William Drummond’s politically dangerous poem, “The 5 Senses” (“From such a face whose excellence” [f. 21])7 William Basse’s elegy for Shakespeare (“Spencer, lye a thought more nigh” [f. 27v])8 Sir Henry Wotton’s poem on James I’s daughter, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (“You meaner Bewtys of the night” [f. 48]) Robert Herrick’s “Goe perjur’d man if ever thou retourne” (f. 93v).9 Morley’s manuscript begins with “Verses of Dr. Corbett & others” (ff. 2v-39v), followed by another section headed “Songs of Sheapheards & rusticall roundelays formed of fancyes & whistled on” (ff. 40-98v). The first piece is a long poem by Corbett that has a prominent place in many manuscript collections, “Iter Boreale” (“Four clearks of Oxford, doctors 2 and 2” [ff. 3-9v]).10 This work narrates a journey through the Midlands Corbett took with his future father-in-law, Leonard Hutton, and two other dons in 1618,11 a couple of years before he was made Dean of Christ Church. Its anti-Puritan barbs reflect Corbett’s religious and political conservatism as well as his social and intellectual snobbery. Mocking “Lecturers” found in such Puritan strongholds as Banbury and Coventry, the piece attacks zealous Puritan iconoclasm as a kind of desecration, a desacralization of an England whose places and sites were not only marked by such significant historical events as the Battle of Bosworth Field but also by a religious violence that destroyed wayside crosses and even, in one case, turned a church building into an inn. Through the 1620s, 1630s, and 1640s this poem continued to be copied in manuscript poetical collections not only because it was associated with other Christ Church poetry but also because it continued to be relevant to the struggles between conservative and radical religious factions. It expressed, early on, a political royalism that had its strongest literary manifestation in the 1630s, 1640s, and beyond.12

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Morley’s collection continues with several more Corbett poems, some answer verse, but then, as the eighth and ninth pieces, two love elegies by John Donne, “The Anagram” (f. 14r-v]) and “To his Mistress Going to Bed” (ff. 14v-15). It also has ten other Donne poems scattered throughout the rest of the manuscript: “The Bracelet” under the title “To a Lady whose chaine was lost by X” (ff. 30-31) “The Perfume” (called “Perfumes”) (ff. 32v-33) “The Apparition” (called “Apparition of a Lover”) (f. 33v) “The Comparison” (untitled here) (ff. 67v-68v) “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” (untitled) (ff. 68v-69) “An Epithalamion on the Lady/Elizab[eth] & Count Palat[ine]” (ff. 70-72v) “The Sunne Rising” (titled “Ad solem”) (ff. 72v-73) “The Curse” (untitled) (f. 73v) “To Sir Henry Wooton” (“Sir more then kisses”) (ff. 74-75) “Obsequies on the Lord Harrington” (untitled here) (“Faire Soul which was not only as all soules bee”) (ff. 75-79v). One of the questions concerning the dissemination of John Donne’s poetry in manuscript is how his verse got from a London coterie environment to an academic one, where it was frequently copied. One possible route was by way of Henry King, who finally became Donne’s literary executor, but another was by means of John Donne, Jr., who from 1623 to 1634 was a student at Christ Church, having come there from Westminster School, the very route such Christ Church poets as Corbett, Strode, King, and Cartwright took. At Christ Church, as Peter Beal notes, the younger Donne had “some acquaintance” with William Strode, who was Corbett’s chaplain and whose poems circulated in the collegiate environment and beyond (though never collected in a seventeenth-century print edition).13 The edition of Corbett’s poetry the younger Donne brought out in 1647, Certain Elegant Poems Written by Dr. Corbet, Bishop of Norwich, which contains twenty-two pieces, several of which were by other authors, looks a case of interception of a group of lyrics circulating at Christ Church, a situation of literary transmission in which poems by one author were usually mixed with those of others. In the preface to the superior second edition of Corbett’s poetry, Poetica Stromata (1648), the editor of that volume states: “I heere offer to thy view, a Collection of certaine pieces of poetry, which have flown from hand to hand, theses [sic] many yeares, in private papers, but were never Fixed for the publique eie of the world to looke upon, til now” (sig. A2). This describes the situation of the manuscript transmission of poems both editors exploited for print publication.

“Rolling Archetypes” 185 The second Christ Church anthology, BL MS Sloane 1792, is a collection of 180 poems compiled by one “I.A.” of Christ Church, whom Mary Hobbs identifies as John Aubrey, a cousin of the more famous namesake.14 Its contents resemble those of most other Christ Church compilations, especially Morley’s collection. Hobbs, who discusses the closeness of these two collections, especially in relation to the first fortyfive poems in Morley’s manuscript, believes that, given the probability that Morley lent his anthology to the undergraduates he tutored, the poems that Aubrey’s manuscript shares with it were copied “more or less at one time” and “many of the Sloane manuscript’s errors or blank spaces occur where the Westminster manuscript is messy and illegible … This … supports the theory that I. A. could have been selecting directly.”15 As an anthology with fifty percent more titles than Morley’s, Aubrey’s collection has a broader range of verse. The third Christ Church collection is British Library MS Add. 30982, which belonged to Daniel Leare, a second cousin of William Strode.16 This manuscript is a small notebook such as a student might use and the original compilation of poems is found on ff. 1-89 and, in reverse transcription, on ff. 163v-117.17 Basically a Caroline collection, it has pieces by Strode and by other Christ Church poets, many of which refer to persons and topics of interest to their academic community. For example, Margaret Forey points out that Leare was a student at Christ Church from 1630 to 1633 and that he inserted over eighty of Strode’s poems in his compilation, probably having had access to Strode’s autograph manuscript, Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 325. She speculates that Leare put his collection together in 1631 and 1632 before he relocated to London.18 One of the poems Leare’s manuscript shares with Aubrey’s is Richard Corbett’s much-transcribed anti-iconoclastic, anti-Puritan lyric “Upon Fairford Windows,” which is found in over two dozen surviving manuscripts. In Aubrey’s manuscript there are several deletions made, perhaps, some time after the original transcription. I reproduce the text with the variants found in Leare’s version (noted below): Tell me you antique^-^ saintes why glasse [To] you is longer lived then brasse? And why the saints have scapt your falls Better from walles ^windowes^ then from windowes ^walles^ Is it because the brethrens fires [5] Maintaine a glasshouse in black friers, Next which the church stands North & South And East & West the preachers mouth? Or ist because such painted ware Resembles somthing what you are? [10] Soe pyed, soe seeming, soe unsound

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Multiple Manuscripts Circulating In doctrine and in manners found, That out of Emblematicke witt You spare your selves by sparing it. If it bee soe then Fairford boast [15] Thy church hath keept what all have lost. And is preserved from the bane of either warr or Puritane Wh^o^se life is coloured in thy paint The inside drosse the outside saint. [20] (f. 73v) 1 antique-] anticke A30; 2 Why you] to you A30; 3 scapt] staged A30; 9 ist] its A30; 17 bane] faine A30

In the first line, Aubrey originally had “antique saints” before he (or someone else) changed it through deletion and insertion to “anti-saints.” This alternate reading of the term, which appears in Leare’s manuscript, as well as in BL MS Sloane 542 (f. 59v), another Christ Church manuscript, also appears with the same deletion in two other Christ Church manuscripts, BL MSS Sloane 1446 (f. 11) and Harley 6931 (f. 73v). The term “antique saints” (spelled “anticke” in Leare’s manuscript) makes as much sense as “anti-saints”: the OED definitions 2.a, b, and c are relevant and contemporary: “Absurd from fantastic incongruity; grotesque, bizarre, uncouthly ludicrous … in gesture … in shape … [or] in dress or attire.” Hamlet famously puts on an “antic disposition” to feign madness. There may ultimately be no textual authority for this reading, but it is an interesting misreading of what Corbett probably originally wrote. Another piece found in these three collections is the song beginning “When cold winter’s withered brow,” attributed in some manuscripts to “E. Bass.”19 Titled similarly in the Leare and Aubrey manuscripts (“On the hunting of the hare,” “The Hunting of the Hare”), it is attributed to William Strode in Leare’s collection.20 A version of the poem similar to that found in the Morley, Leare, and Aubrey manuscripts is the one in St. John’s College, Cambridge MS S.32 (ff. 1-2). This version, collated against those in the Leare and Aubrey manuscripts (S17 and A30) and that found in the royalist collection, Bod. MS Ash. 38 (p. 119) (A38), reads as follows: A Songe When Cold winters withered browe waxe pale & wann with sorrowe had or’ecome the silent night and Cominge was the morrow

“Rolling Archetypes” 187 I heard a boye With a shoute of joye A Jubite & a hollowe Cry runne away Tys almost Day Forsake your bedd & followe Then with a sorte well arm’d for the sport Upon their Coursers mounted Such as Venus boy bestrid When hee the wild boare hunted upon the downes With a packe of houndes Whome nature hath befrinded Persu’d poore Watt Newe stolne from quato Her first sleepe scarcely ended Then to the Vales, to the hills to the Dales And over Craggy mountaines Through the woods and shady groves Enricht with Christall fountaines Where silver streames With murmur sweete And little birdes with wonder Did Warble noates Through there prety throates Which fild the ayre with wonder thunder Echo shrill from the Vales to the Hills21 Silvanus and his Satyrs Elves and fayres all awake The sea-Nymphs from theire waters They not disdayne Soe deepe a strayne Attentively delighted Courting the Day For longer stay Least they should bee benighted Then to the Fouldes to the hills to the houldes And to her wonted Cunninge With godheads and Dubles22 Wat’s inforc’t For to forsake her runninge Her dubled buskings

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Multiple Manuscripts Circulating Doe betraye Her art & trickes in flyeinge She heres her knell Rung passing well And yet not sicke nor dyeinge W[illia]m Strode

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Collated with A30, S17, and A38: Title A Songe] On the hunting of the hare A30; The hunting of the hare S17; 2 waxe] waxt A30 S17 A38; 3 had or’ecome] When passed was A38; 5 boye] youth A30 S17 A38; 6 shoute of joye] bugle cleer A30 S17, a bugle cleare A38; 7 Jubite] Jubile A30 S17, gibet A38; 8 runne] come S17 A38; 9 almost] all A38. Day] broud Day A30; 10 bedd] beds A30 S17 A38; 11 with a sorte] came a troupe A30 S17; the] om. S17 A38; 12 Upon] And A30; mounted] bravely mounted S17; 14 hee] shee A30 S17; 15 upon] They range A30, They rang’d S17, Then on A38; 16 a] a little A30; 17 Whom] Which A30 S17, line om. in A38 18 persu’d] pursuing A30 S17; 19 newe] newly A30 S17; quat] squatt A30 S17; 20 scarcely] hardly A38; 21 Then] Now A38; 22 Craggy] cragged A38; 23 Through] throughout A30 S17; shady] shaddowe A38; 26 sweete] omit A30 S17; 27 little] pretty A38; 28 Did Warble] Doe carrall A30 S17 A38; 29 Through there pretty throates] with well tun’d Throate A38; 30 Which fild] That still A30, and fill A38; 31 shrill] fill A30 S17; Vales] vale A38; hills] hill A38; 32 Silvanus] The Salvages A38; his] om. A38 33 all] doe A38; wake] awake A30 A38; 34 The] And A38; theire] the S17 A38; 35 They not disdayne] they listen to A30 S17 A38; 36 Soe deepe a strayne] to our deeper straines A38; 39 for] for a A30 A38; 40 Least they should bee] Wee may not bee A38; 41 Then] Now A38; hills] wayes A30 S17 A38; 43 godheads] heads A30 A38; Wat’s] watt A30 S17, was A30; inforc’t] flies A30 S17; 45 dubled buskings] dabled biskinges A38; 46 betraye] bewray A38; 47 art] trickes A38. trickes] feates A38; 48 heres] heard A38; her] the A30; 49 Rung] ring A30; 50 not] nor A38 This version of poem moves the lines of the Wits Interpreter (1655) forty-line text of the poem (pp. 66–68) from “Now to the rocks … And yet not sick but dying” to the end (ll. 41–50, above). The text of the poem in The New Academy of Complements (1669), pp. 90–91, eliminates these lines entirely. Both the Wits Interpreter version and those found in A30, S17 and in this manuscript lack the final eight lines of the version found in Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 246:

“Rolling Archetypes” 189 Now silly watt had quite forgott His straines his jumps his doubles The huntsmans troope doth make him droope And all his senses troubles And then poore watt he steales againe to squatt Thinking thus to deceive them But the next view he bids the world adew They streight of life bereave him. (f. 10v) This Rawlinson version reproduces, with textual variants, stanzas 1, 2, 5, 6, and 3 of the song found in Bod. MS Ash. 38, p. 119, offering a poem that appropriately ends with the killing of the hare. This text, however, jumps from the first line of the stanza beginning in the Wits Interpreter version, “Then ore the dales, ore the hills and vales,” to the second line of the stanza beginning “Now to the rocks, to the fens, to the caves,” losing eight lines of verse.23 A copyist eyeskip might explain what happened, but, since this is a song and was probably memorized and, in some cases, copied from memory, this error, and the moving of two stanzas of the poem from one location to another, might have been the result of flawed recall. So too might have been many of the numerous textual variants among the manuscript and printed exemplars. Copying texts found in other manuscript documents no doubt took place, but the genealogies of some poems, especially songs, might have involved memorial transcription as well.24 The complex relationship of oral, scripted, and printed texts creates an editorial nightmare. The Leare and Aubrey versions of the poem, however, are close to one another in most respects. Another poem on the topic of hare hunting (beginning “Long ere te morne”), which mocks the Welsh dialect, also appears in Morley’s, Leare’s, and Aubrey’s manuscripts as well as in the related Christ Church manuscript Folger MS V.a.170 (W41, ff. 37v-38; A30, ff. 50v; S17, f. 105r-v; F17, p. 249). Finally, the Aubrey manuscript, and no other manuscript listed in the Folger Index, has a copy of another poem from Morley’s manuscript (ff. 40v-41), entitled “The Hunting of the Hare” (“Chast Diana applauded the motion” [f. 105v]). Coney-catching, at least in its metaphoric senses, was evidently an activity imaginatively appealing to young men at Christ Church.25 There are some rare poems not found in the Morley manuscript that are shared between Leare’s and Aubrey’s collections. For example, the Folger Index lists only Leare’s (A30, ff. 28v-30) and Aubrey’s manuscripts and Bod. MS Eng. Poet. e.14 (f. 65) for the poem titled “On a Gentlewoman seene naked,” which merges an Ovidian narrative with the blazon. In S17, ff. 7-10, the poem reads

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Multiple Manuscripts Circulating On a Gentlewoman seen naked As I alone did walke to mone The Sorrows of my hart, By chance I found Upon the ground A sight did joy impart. And twas a lass who naked was And of such beauty made As I may sweare That I saw there The sunne lie in the shade. The curious skinne She was wrapt in Was smoother fare then silke; Her parts below were made of snow Her upper parts of milke. She had a haire Soe thike and faire Inclining unto browne As that heavens sunne Away did runne, Her lockes were soe putt down. Her forehead plaine Was white in grane, And was soe fittly rais’d, That witt of man Nor could nor can Tell how it should be praised Here like two sparkes Made starres, like larkes Stoope from the skie to gaze; Which from her sight wold take faire light, And then goe back and blaze.

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“Rolling Archetypes” 191 Her nose could bee Forby misterie For excellence, and looke Nought but a line By hand divine For admiration struck.

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And who soe seekes To find her cheekes So round, so faire, so fresh, Must heaven about To find them out, For there are none such of flesh.

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Some wonder brake For her, to make Her lipps; in which alone who her doth view may see there grew To wonders out of one.

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Her chinnes the part That poseth [sic] art, For to her chinne is given In spight of stint [sic] Arethmetique To be but one and even. Her neck was dighto with blew, and white, And those so rarely plac’d; That none ere knew, If white the blew Or blew the white more grac’t. Her brests di[d] show Like rocks of snow Upon a silver maine; Betweene which is The streights of blisse, Whose bottome’s Pleasures plaine. Her wast is the gift Of natures thrift Soe fare from prodigall;

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Multiple Manuscripts Circulating That she can spare None of her share, It is soe very smale. Slender her hands (Her fingers wands) White backs redd palmes inclose; Athing most rare One steme should beare A Lilly and a Rose. Her lovely wombe Seem’d beauties loome, And next to that doth lie; In a descent Thats adjacent, The fort of chastity. Two beauteous thighs Did swelling rise In state, and were soe white, That with the gleames Of their pure beames They dazeled mortall sight. And under these were two such knees, That I dare undertake There is no stuffe That is good enough Such two againe to make. Her leggs were wrought So neat that thought Cannot it selfe extend So curiusnes Of more or lesse That could their shape amend. And then her feete Pure white and sweete Were such as I dare say, That were they brittle As they are little They wold not last one day.

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“Rolling Archetypes” 193 Collation with A30 and E14: 6 did] that A30; 9 of] with A30; 17 were] was A30; 22 that] if E14; 24 Her] His E14; 31 Here like] Here lies A30, Her Eyes E14; 33 skie] skyes E14; 38 Forby misterie] for by maiostrie A30, For Simmetry E14; 39 woke] witt & looke A30, looke E14; 50 For her] in her A30, In two E14; 53 grew] drew A30 E14; 56 poseth] passeth A30; 58 stint] strict A30 E14; 60 and] an A30; 61 dight] light A30; 65 the] bee A30; 71 streights] streight E14; 73 wast] wast’s E14; 77 of her] other E14; 81 white] with A30; 83 Athing] acting A30; 87 doth] did A30; 90 fort] force A30; 95 beames] streimes A30; 106 So] To E14; 113 are little] aptittle A30 The transcription in Leare’s manuscript has some obvious misreadings of the version that appears in Aubrey’s and both the Leare and Aubrey versions have readings that look inferior to those in E14.26 Another poem (or poetic fragment) found in both manuscripts is an unusual rearrangement of part of a poem attributed to Shakespeare, “When that thine eye hath chose the dame,” a piece found in three other surviving manuscripts and in the printed collection, William Jaggard’s The Passionate Pilgrim (1599, 1612). This lyric is found in complete form (with textual variants) in BL MS Harley 7392 (f. 43r-v) and Folger MSS V.a.89 (pp. 25–6) and V.a.339 (f. 191v), the first manuscript version appearing to be the least corrupt text.27 Aubrey’s version (f. 11r-v) selects and rearranges eighteen lines of the fifty-four-line poem to fashion a new lyric that is found in Leare’s collection (f. 52v) minus two of the lines.28 In Aubrey’s manuscript it reads: Upon one that went a wooing The wiles and giles which women worke, Dissembled with an outward show: The trickes and toyes that in them lurke, The cocke that treads them cannot know. Have you not heard it saide full oft, A womans nay doth stand for nought. What though shee strive to try her strength, And bann and braule, and say thee nay; Her feeble force will yeld at length, When craft hath taught her thus to say, Had women beene as strong as men, Good sooth you had not had it then. What though her cloudie lookes bee bent, Her stormie browes will calme eare night;

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Multiple Manuscripts Circulating And then to late shee will repent, that thus dissembled her delight; And twice desire eare it be day, That which with scorne shee put away.29

[15]

This shorter poem not only has a title but also reproduces just three of the original nine stanzas of the poem, altering their order: ll. 43–48, 31–36, 25–30. The text is closest to that found in the 1599 and 1612 editions of The Passionate Pilgrim, but it has two unique readings: “Good sooth” (l. 12) and “cloudie lookes” (l. 13). At some stage of the original poem’s transmission in manuscript and print, someone sampled and rearranged the text, creating, in effect, a new poem. The two Christ Church collections in which it appears suggest that it was in circulation in that university environment and two of the lines were lost somewhere in the process of manuscript transmission. This omission in Leare’s version resulted either from copying from another defective version of the poem or from the scribe’s eyeskip. The last Christ Church anthology I wish to highlight is Folger MS V.a.170, specifically the section of the manuscript on pp. 13–244, which was copied in a distinctive italic hand.30 It contains a large collection of verse, mainly from Christ Church poets, many of the same poems that can be found in Morley’s manuscript. It has 152 poems and three fragments, including fifty-seven poems by Strode, fifteen by Corbett, three by Morley, two by King, two by Gervais Warmestry and one each by John Earle, Brian Duppa, Jeramiel Terrent, Jasper Mayne, and William Cartwright. Poets outside of Christ Church and Oxford include Thomas Randolph (five poems), John Donne (five poems), Ben Jonson (four poems and two extracts), Thomas Carew (five poems), Sir Henry Wotton, Francis Beaumont, Robert Herrick, William Browne of Tavistock, and (in an anonymously presented version of Sonnet 2 entitled “To one that would dye a Mayd”) William Shakespeare.31 Appendix 1 lists the first lines of poems from Morley’s collection in the order in which they appear so that one can see which pieces it has in common with the three other manuscripts and perceive the order in which they occur in these other documents. First, some basic observations: there are twenty-nine poems that appear in all four manuscripts and twenty-six poems in Morley’s manuscript (some entered by other hands) that do not appear in any of the others. Morley’s and Aubrey’s manuscripts share a large number of items, seventy-one, but the order in which they are found differs quite dramatically.32 Leare’s collection has forty-nine pieces and the Folger manuscript has forty-five pieces in common with Morley’s anthology, also in quite different ordering.33 There are two main possibilities here: first, that one scribe had in his possession a large collection that he sampled without following the order in which the items appeared, or, two, that poems circulated at Christ

“Rolling Archetypes” 195 Church in what Harold Love called “separates”—as single items, several pieces together on a bifolium, or in small booklets as contrasted with larger bodies of work or even whole bound or unbound codices. Margaret Crum’s observations about the circulation of the manuscript poetry of John Donne and Henry King describes this kind of transmission.34 If what Morley had in his possession (before a modern trimming and binding of the papers) was itself a combination of separates, then Aubrey would not necessarily have been handling a single codex whose parts were fixed in the order in which we now encounter them in the Westminster manuscript: this, rather than an erratic skipping about that collection to record items out of an original order, might explain the failure of the two collections to match up with one another in a defined sequence of poems. In the case of the Leare manuscript, even though the compiler probably used Strode’s substantial autograph manuscript as one source text for his relative’s poetry,35 he probably copied other verse from separates. Harold Love’s archetypes are called “rolling” because they accumulate additions in the course of their movement forward in time through the processes of manuscript transmission. A good example of what happens to Christ Church verse as it was passed on is, I believe, Folger MS V.a.345, the focus of Chapter 5 of this study. It is a collection of over 500 poems that contains the work of several Christ Church poets, including many pieces addressing local town/gown relations in Oxford, but also a large number of epigrams (many copied from printed editions) as well as a many poems reflecting on the topical political scandals, crises, and news of the day, including many rare or unique pieces—a broad spectrum of verse reflecting the interest in witty compositions that was shared by University, Inns-of-Court, and Court poets of the age.36 In comparison to a collection such as Morley’s, this large compilation, which has some fifteen poems by Corbett and a smaller number by Strode, immerses the work of Christ Church poets in much larger textual environment.37

University Poems Spreading to London If we shift our focus from the university to London, where some Christ Church poets and many manuscript compilers finally relocated, I think we can see how some of the university poems were absorbed into larger, more heterogeneous collections compiled by assembling small or large groups of poems often copied in order from large source manuscripts as often as from smaller separates. The first manuscript, or two-part manuscript anthology, to which I would call attention is a document Mary Hobbs has related to a group of manuscripts connected with the family of Henry King, who himself moved from Christ Church to London in 1616, but who returned occasionally to Oxford, and whose

196

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating

verse was disseminated, especially by his amanuensis Thomas Manne.38 It is interesting to note, for example, the presence of a run of poems at the end of BL MS Harley 6917 (H17) and at the start of Harley 6918 (H18) that were copied, it would seem, from Manne’s collection, BL MS Add. 58215 (A58), in roughly the same order as they appear in that document (see Appendix 2).39 There is an especially marked overlap of the Harley manuscripts with Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50 (C50): they share twenty-seven poems, fifteen of them in more or less the same order, the rest not so.40 The two-part, chronologically progressive, Harley MSS 6917 and 6918, a professionally transcribed, large anthology owned by Peter Calfe, whose own poems are added in a different hand to the final pages of the latter collection, gathers a great variety of texts circulating in London in the late Caroline, Civil-War, and Interregnum periods, submerging the older university verse in a more politically and socially up-to-date compilation. Two features about this collection immediately stand out: there are twenty-seven poems by King family members (seventeen by Henry) and thirty-five poems by Thomas Carew,41 especially early in the collection: the impression is of copying either a large group of poems circulating by itself or a section of a larger manuscript in which the poems are grouped together. The overlap of Harley 6917 and the first eleven folios of Harley 6918 with Manne’s manuscript is quite obvious. The scribe seems to have taken a run of consecutive poems from ff. 10-15, then picked up a poem from f. 49, before recording the poem on f. 48v. The run continues until ff. 67-68v, where the copyist leaves out two poems from Manne, “At this glad Triumph, when most poets use” (f. 67r-v) and “An Epigram on the princes birth. May 29, 1630” (“And art thou borne brave Babe? blest be the day” [f. 68]—attributed to Ben Jonson), then continues with a poem found on ff. 68v-69 of Manne’s collection before skipping nine poems, after which he picks up the poem on f. 76v of Manne’s manuscript, recording later the poem on f. 73v (“Women be no more cheated in the trust”) and the poem on f. 75 (“though righteous Lots companion lost her life” [attributed to Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset]). There are several poems by Christ Church poets—four by Corbett, four by Strode, two by Morley, two by Reynolds, one each by Cartwright and Duppa—but there are also six poems attributed to Richard Crashaw in Steps to the Temple (1646), pieces that L. C. Martin states were probably written while Crashaw was an undergraduate at Cambridge (1631–34).42 Since Harley 6917 was probably completed by 1645, they were obviously derived from manuscript sources, probably a single document since they are transcribed together on ff. 54-60, interrupted only by two other poems. In this huge, twopart collection, then, we can see a confluence of poetry from both universities with texts produced in courtly and urban environments.

“Rolling Archetypes” 197 As a final example of manuscripts with partial overlapping of contents, I would point to two pairs of poetical collections: Harv. MS Eng. 626 (H626) and Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50 (C50),43 and Folger MS V.a.96 (F96) and Hunt. MS HM 172 (HM172) (see Appendix 3).44 The Harvard manuscript is primarily a Caroline collection, though it does include some earlier poems by Donne, Jonson, Ralegh, and others. There are fifteen poems by Herrick, nine by Carew, five by Shirley, and a surprising thirty-two by Randolph. The Bodleian manuscript shares with the Harvard manuscript thirteen poems by Herrick, seven by Carew, five by Shirley, and twenty-seven by Randolph. In addition, it has two more poems by Herrick and one by Carew absent from the Harvard manuscript. The Folger manuscript shares fewer poems with the Harvard one, but there is a run of poems on ff. 33-55 in more or less the same order as found on ff. 65-81 of the Harvard manuscript—though, as the chart indicates, there are eight other poems on earlier folios matching pieces in the Huntington manuscript. The overlap between the Harvard and Bodleian manuscripts is 106 poems—though we might exclude one of these that comes from the section of the manuscript following the hand that leaves off on f. 122. The Folger and Huntington manuscripts have forty-four poems in common. In the Bodleian manuscript, in which several hands are represented, there is a section that is copied in a neat italic hand, ff. 52-122, which has most of the poems found in the Harvard manuscript in much the same order, these two manuscripts also having considerable overlap with the Folger and Huntington manuscripts whose contents track closely with one another. We might characterize the contents of these four manuscripts as predominantly urban and courtly, reflecting the Jonsonian style of Cavalier verse found in the manuscript poems in circulation in the Caroline period. What stands out is the thirty or so poems by Thomas Randolph, who, when Trinity College, Cambridge was closed due to the plague in 1630, came to London and was “adopted” by Ben Jonson as one of his poetic “sons.”45 The collections have seventeen poems by Herrick, ten by Carew, six by Shirley, three by Owen Felltham, one by Massinger, and one by Cleveland, as well as nine by Jonson himself. Only a few poems from Christ Church made it into these manuscripts (only one poem by Corbett, for example, in two of the manuscripts). If we look at the list of first lines in Appendix 3, twenty-five items are found in all four manuscripts, fourteen in three only. Only one poet is represented by more than two items, Thomas Randolph. The Harvard manuscript has the largest number of pieces by Randolph, thirty-two. This suggests that his poems were circulating in London, perhaps in separate groups. If we look at the congruence of the poems in each of two pairs of manuscripts we see very close relationships, not only in the number of poems but also in the order in which we find them. The list of first lines, which has some in italics because the items are not found in

198

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating

H626, but in the other manuscripts in the cluster, shows that C50 shares 105 poems with H626, and F96 shares forty-four poems with HM172—in each of the two cases in roughly the same order.46 This suggests that copying took place from a whole collection or larger units, rather than from small “separates.”47 Some repetitions are partly due to the popularity of particular poems but also to their presence, no doubt, in circulating booklets of verse that compilers probably used to construct their own collections, Harold Love’s “rolling archetypes.” What we have, then, in many manuscript anthologies of verse is compilations of compilations.48

Sociocultural and Political Connections Between the University and London Poems came to university collections from the outside world and, in turn, university poetry moved beyond the walls of academe, particularly to London. The far-reaching patronage system worked in both settings, the cultural conflicts of the outside world entered the academic environment, and values and attitudes developed within the university were carried to the cultural centers of London and the Court. If we look at the verse produced and collected within the academic community, and its passage to the world beyond not as individual poems but as clusters or “rolling archetypes,” making the larger groupings of poetry the object of analysis, we can see the contours of a certain set of cultural concerns and socioliterary dynamics. Within Christ Church and the larger university community, including, to some extent, Cambridge as well as Oxford, there was a set of group attitudes, values, and interests represented in the verse being transmitted through the manuscript system. Professional academics and their students positioned themselves socially—above the class of “town” figures and a servant class, on the one hand, and below powerful aristocrats, government officials, and royalty. In relation to the former, they produced poems mocking butlers, carriers, local sheriffs, and (allegedly) libidinous women. The epitaph on Owen the butler of Christ Church by Ben Stone of New College, Oxford (“Why cruel death should honest Owen catch”) is found in Leare’s manuscript (f. 11v) and in at least seventeen others, while another epitaph on the same figure (“Manners whether are you fled”) is found in Morley’s (f. 47v) and Aubrey’s (f. 82v-83) collections. A comic epitaph “On Mr. Pricke of Christ Church” (“The fifth day of this last November”) (an individual not to be confused with Edmund Pricke of Christ Church, Cambridge) appears in Leare’s collection (f. 13) as well as in some five other manuscripts. University figures such as John Dawson the Butler (d. 1622), were commemorated: Corbett’s poem on him (“Dawson the butlers dead although I think”) appears in some seventeen manuscripts.

“Rolling Archetypes” 199 In relating to social superiors and royalty, Christ Church writers produced a poetry of clientage as well as satiric and libelous verse. Andrew McRae is right about the conjunction of sycophancy and satire in this environment—especially in the poetry of Corbett.49 Since the monarch regularly visited the university and it depended on his royal patronage, university poets commented on the royal visits, including some of the mishaps that took place—for example, the failure of Barton Holiday’s play Technogamia (1618), which King James found excruciatingly boring, and the personal embarrassment of Richard Corbett occasioned by his forgetting the text of his sermon as he fiddled with the ring the king had just given him as a present.50 Academic versifiers also wrote poems that celebrated the birth of children into the royal family or mourned the death of monarchs or of royal family members. Conscious, in all their work, of the relationship of the social and political periphery to the metropolitan center, they commented on contemporary scandals, international events, and national political and religious struggles: the Somerset/Howard marriage, the Spanish Match, the various exploits of and misadventures of the Duke of Buckingham, including his assassination, all figured in this verse. For example, Aubrey’s manuscript has, as the second poem in the collection, a satiric piece directed against Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset (“She with whom troops of bustuary slaves” [ff. 2v-3]);51 Corbett’s poem about the prospective Spanish Match (“All the newes that is stirring now/Is of the golden lady”) appears in both Morley’s (f. 18r-v) and Aubrey’s (f. 52v) collections; Corbett’s poems addressed to or written about his patron, the Duke of Buckingham, through whose help he secured his position as Dean of Christ Church, appear in a large number of Christ Church collections.52 An epitaph printed in the 1623 edition of Camden’s Remaines, “On the death of an infant,” but in one manuscript called “Epitaph on the Lady Sophia, youngest daughter of King James the First, who died the day after birth” (Yale Osb. MS c.360/r, no. 63), and in another “On the Lady Mary, daughter of King James” (Folger MS V.a.103, f. 5v), is attributed to George Morley in Leare’s collection (“Within this marble casket lies” [A30, f. 2]) and it appears in over thirty other manuscripts, many connected with Christ Church. This piece is followed in Leare’s collection by a poem attributed to Sir John Davies, “As carefull mothers to their beds doe lay” (f. 2), which is identified elsewhere as an epitaph for Lady Mary, the infant daughter of King James, who died in 1606: it appears in at least thirty-six other surviving manuscripts from the period, including many Christ Church ones. George Morley’s elegy for King James (“All that have eyes now wake and weep”) appears in his manuscript (f. 48v), Aubrey’s (f. 44), Leare’s (f. 59), and some twenty others. Corbett’s poem on the death of Lady Arabella Stuart (“How do I thank thee death & bless this hower”) appears in Morley’s (f. 61), Leare’s (f. 8) and Aubrey’s manuscripts (f. 70v), as well as in many others.

200

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating

The university was an all-male environment and the poetry written within its precincts reflected both the hierarchical pedagogical relationship of teachers and pupils but also the dynamics of peer-group male bonding. Students copied poems by Corbett, Strode, and Morley—all of whom functioned as their teachers and role models. On whatever level they functioned, poets composed witty verse that confirmed class and group identity: this took the form of epigrams mocking social and intellectual inferiors as well as witty misogynistic pieces. Strode’s poem “On a good foot and a bad leg” appears in some fifteen manuscripts. Corbett’s popular poem “On the ladies of the new dresse” mocks fashion-mongering women; poems about the ugly, sexually aggressive Mrs. Mallett (for example, Corbett’s “On Mrs Mallet” [“Have I renounc’d my faith or basely sold”], and “Skelton some rhymes, good Elderton a ballet”) are found in many manuscripts—the first in over two dozen collections, including Morley’s (f. 9v), Aubrey’s (f. 26) Leare’s (f. 138v), and the related Folger manuscript (p. 13). The second poem may have been the product of group composition: it is variously attributed to Corbett, Jeramiel Terrant, Brian Duppa, and James Smith.53 It is not surprising that the bawdy and the obscene are prominent in the verse written and collected in this single-sex environment. When compilers and groups of texts moved from the university to London, especially in the 1630s and 1640s, its political, religious, and social conflicts became more prominent in the developing poetical collections, even obliquely in their occlusion in some of the more escapist Cavalier verse of poets such as Carew, Randolph, Herrick, and Shirley, but some of the witty verse originally produced in Christ Church found its way not only into new manuscript collections but also into some of the printed poetical miscellanies being published and republished in the 1640s and 1650s.54

Conclusion It is tempting to say that, in the literate classes of early modern England, everyone knew everyone else. Though this was obviously not the case, the transmission of poems, especially in groups large or small, testifies to the academic, social, and political ties of many educated and politically active people in academic and metropolitan environments in the first half of the seventeenth century in England. The published verse of the period (in which, for example, the work of writers such as Richard Corbett and William Strode did not loom large) do not reveal as well as the contemporary manuscripts the socioliterary dynamics of the time, print culture beginning the decontextualizing process by which ephemeral and occasional verse became deracinated and transhistorical literature. The poetical compilations that have survived in manuscript represent, no doubt, only a small portion of what once existed, but they are a

“Rolling Archetypes” 201 substantial body of documentary evidence of a once vital and widespread system of literary transmission—one that preserves many texts that otherwise would have been lost but also one that also suggests some of the social connections among writers and readers of the time. To do a social history of the literature of the period these manuscript remains are essential in order to give a rich account of reading and writing practices as well as of textual transformations and recontextualizations as poems moved from the creative stage of their original production through the vicissitudes of their transmission and collection by particular collectors whose actions often made them textual co-creators. What happened to literature in this process may look to textual editors like “corruptions,” but cultural and literary historians can thrive on examining such material.

Appendix 1 (Overlap of Westminster Abbey Lib. MS 41, BL MSS Sloane 1792 and Add. 30982, and Folger MS V.a.170) W41 S17 Four clerks of Oxford, doctors two and two (Corbett) [When] I passed Pauls & travailed in the walk (Corbett) Even so dead Hector twise was triumph’d on (Corbett) Soe to Dead Hector boyes may doe disgrace (Daniel Price) Nor is it greivd (grave youth) the memory (Corbett) Since Sussex Dragon & Low Countrey newes (Brian Duppa) I’ve read of Ilands floating & removd (Corbett) Marry and Love thy Flavia for shee (Donne) Come, Madam come, all rest my powers defy (Donne) It is not yet a fortnight since (Corbett) All the newes that is stirring now Deare loss to tell the world I greive were true (Corbett) When I can pay my parents or my King (Corbett) If shadows be the pictures excellence (Walton Poole) From such a face whose excellence (William Drummond) The mighty zeales which thou hast new put on (Corbett)

A30

F17

3

28

106

10

65

59v

85

10v

12v

156v

13

11

13

11 11v

60v 124v

12v 14 14v

42 83 27

15v 18 19

52v 47v

20 20v

49v 23

57 152

16

50

80v

72

14 156

14 15

81 81

57 57

53v 216

21 22v

(Continued)

202

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating

Be dumb you infant chimes thumpe not your mettle (Corbett) If wee at Woodstock Have not pleased those (Corbett) ’Tis not my person nor my play (Barton Holiday) A silly John surprised with joy (J. Deane?) Goe troubled rimes; a sadly goe A zelous locksmyth dyed of late55 My pretty lute [book] when I am gon (Corbett) The Sheriff of Oxford late is grown so wise (Ben Stone) Thou once a Body, now but aire (Corbett) Well fare those 3 that wher ther was a dearth (Morley) [Renowned] Spencer lye a thought more nigh (William Basse) From a Gypsy in the Morning (Jonson) Cocke Lowrell would needs have the Divell his guest (Jonson) Have I renounc’d my fayth? or basely sold (Corbett) Goe & count her better howers (Strode) Not that in Colour it was like thine haire (Donne) Is shee not wondrous faire? but o I see (Carew) What is our life? a play of passion (Ralegh) once & but once found in thy company (Donne) When by thy scorne o murdress I am dead (Donne) My limbs were weary & my Head opprest (Morley) Sitting? & reddy to bee drawne (Jonson) Painter you’re come but may be gonn (Jonson) A Silly Sheapheard Swayn (Morley) Long ere te morne as te tay57 I loud thee once Ile love no more (Ayton) See the building where whilst my mistris livd in Chaste Diana applauded the Motion These broad bowles to the Olympicall rector58 Sith fortune th’art become so kinde59 [poem whose first line trimmed, ending “And pricking up their Eares”] When Medow growndes [were fresh] & gay (Strode) A plague on barrenness! yet no excuse That [] (line trimmed) Noe sooner old Bell60 I saw faire Cloris walk alone (Strode) Manners whether are you fled (Strode) You meaner bewtys of the night (Wotton) All that have eyes now wake & weepe (Morley)

W41 S17

A30

F17

24v

3v

157

24v

66

24v 25 26 26 26 26v

52v

54 44 44 47v

36 17

80

26v 27

66 19

51v

70

27v

114

27v 28v

64 55

155

67

29v 30 30 32 32 32v 32v 33v 34r 34v 36r 37v 38v 39v 40v 40v 41v 42v

26 23 39v 21 56 56 47 41v 56 56v

138v 41

13

105

155v 139

200 43 4456

2v

78 170

50v

249

105v

43v 45 45v 45v 47 47v 48 48v

80

6

10v 82v 44

62

237 48

145v 59

43 61

(Continued)

“Rolling Archetypes” 203

For 22 yeeres long care (Morley) [epilogue to previous poem] Within this marble casket lyes61 (Morley?) Death & this man were long at a stand If gentleness could tame the fates; or with (Corbett) Scilla is toothlesse, yet when shee was young When forty winters shall beseige thy brow62 (Shakespeare) Down came grave ancient Sir John Crooke (Hoskins et al.) At length by the work of wondrous fate There is a thing that nothing is (Strode) What thing is that is neyther felt nor seene (Strode?) Hadst thou like other Sirs & Knights of worth (Corbett) Keepe on your maske & hyde your eye (Strode) Tell me you Anti-saints why glass (Corbett) A fitter match hath never bin (Strode) Come come I feynt, thy heavy stay (Strode) Preferment like a game at Bowles (Strode) Dawson the Butlers dead: although I thinck (Corbett) When whispering streynes with creeping wind (Strode) Chide not thy sprowting lipp nor kill (Strode) My strings can doe what no man could (Strode?) O tell me tell thou god of wind (Strode) Now the declining sun ‘gan downward bend (Strode) Though frost and snow lockt from mine eyes (Carew) With a new white feather in his Cappe64 On yonder &c. How do I thank thee death & bless this hower (Corbett) Come all you Muses & rejoyce (Jeramiel Terrent) And why to me this you lame lord of fire? (Jonson) When cold winters withered brow (Strode) My Brother and much more haste thou been mine (Corbett) As the sweet sweate of roses in a still (Donne) As vertuous men passe ly away (Donne) Hayle Bishope Valentine (Donne) Busie old fool unruly sunn (Donne) Some man unworthy to be possessor (Donne) Sir more then kisses letters mingle soules (Donne) Faire Soul which was not only as all soules bee (Donne)

W41 S17

A30

48v

44v

59v

48v 49v 49v 49v 49v

22v 22v 44v 22 45

2

49v

106v

33

50v 51 51 51v

25v 22 21v 74

52v 53v 53v 53v 54 54v

58 73v

55

91

55v 55v 56 57

86 94 63

58v

66v

46 75v

158v 18

F17

163

18

49 89

6 154v 763 3 133 4v

47 153 21 27 170 66

2

34

162 130

63 46 23

154

59v 60v 61

70v

8

61v 63 65v 66

99 101 46v 68

67v

1865

51 80

242

67v 68v 70 72v 73v 74 75

5v

58v

241

(Continued)

204

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating W41 S17

The plott was now growne ranck & needs must bleed (fragment) The Sunne which doth the greatest comfort bring (Beaumont) The witt hath long beholden bin (Strode) have ye seene the white lilly grow66 (Jonson) Evand au Temple nous serons How ill doth he deserve (Carew) Je suis bon Ben Gerzon Un four que ma rebelle Where are all those false dayes blowne (Herrick)67 Goe perjur’d man if ever thou retourne (Herrick) Hortus delirio domus politicam Expediat unde rosam primum [] ruborem I’ll tell thee how the roses first grew red (Strode) Behold, & wonder to behold Anger hasty words or blowes (Waller) Brave Holland leades & with him ffalkland goes (Waller) Whether is gone our bold, our brave old poets hippocrene admire

A30

F17

82 85

84v

78v

197

86 89 89v 91v 92v 92v 93v 93v 93v 95v 95v 95v 96v 97

69 92 131v 131v

148v

171

42v 42v 92

97v 98

Appendix 2 (Overlap of BL MS Harley 6917 (partial), Harley 6918, BL MS Add. 58215, and Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50) H17 When other poets veines are done (John King) ‘Twas once a maxime in the schooles of old (Ann King?) Thy gift, thy Candlestick I prize (John King) Reade, twas a Berkley: birth, and bloud are knowne to dy is natures debt, and when (P. Bradshaw) I loved thee now Ile love no more (Ayton) Courtier if thou needs wilt wive (Massinger) Shall I tell you whom I love (William Browne of Tavistock) The voice I heare, and pitty that poore heart To this Each man’s an Empirick Would you behold a Tempe’s breviate Ile borrow witt and in her comely face Joseph foreseeing these hard times of dearth Cruel hand, the Instrument Blessed spirit, thy Infant breath (John King)

H18

A58

89v 90

10 11

90v 91v

11v 13

91v 92 92v 93

14v 49 48v 54v

93 94 95 95v 96 96 96v

55v 57 58v 59v 60 60v 61v

C50

(Continued)

“Rolling Archetypes” 205 H17 fond haplesse man, lost in thy vaine desire (John King) Come my shadow constant true (John King) I love and am not loved again (John King) Anacreon, and Homer knew (John King?) When private men gett Sonnes, they gett a spoone (Corbett) When you awake, and finde before your view (Sackville?) If wishes may enrich my Boy (John King) Mistrisse of life, by whose great Hearaldry (Philip King) Women be no more Cheated in the trust Though righteous Lots companion lost her life (Sackville?) I tell thee Dick that I have been (Suckling) Gaze not on Swanns, on whose soft breast68 (Henry Noel?) Brave flowers, that I could gallant it like you (Henry King?)69 Great moderator of this starry skye (John King) How much I loved yee whilst yee Livd, heaven and That Epitaph Christ utterd on the Crosse (John King) Here Lyes (unless some dare belye) That sacred Friday by his paines, our peace No Pyramus, nor guilded Elegie Here lyes a model of fraile man Charilla fairest of the Brittaine Dames Wert thou an ancient coarse of a grey head (Jasper Mayne) Why Shoemaker how ist my Spanish Shoee (Strode) Sweetest Love I doe not goe (Donne) Haile Mary, mother of thy father Deare rypp my heart and see When deare I doe but thinke on thee (Owen Felltham) I love the face where sits If Narcissus foolish Boy70 Hide not thy love, and mine shall be (Herrick) Blind beauty if it be a losse (John Grange?) If you doe love as well as I (Edward, Ld. Herbert of Cherbury) That we may still bee true Must you needs goe? hard heart necessitie

H18

A58

97

63

97v 98v 100v 101

62 64 68v 69

101

76v

101v 102

77v 79r

103 103

73v 75

C50

103v 105 105v 1

84

6

75v

6v

83v

6v 8 8v 8v 8v 10v

97v 98v 99 99v 176v 172v (rev) 182(rev)

11v 12 13v 16v 17

53v 75v

17 17v 19 20 20v

74v 77v 78

21 22

83 (Continued)

206

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating H17

Ah gentle winde if ere thou didst suspire Hermes flew downe from heaven with hue and crye princes which by the right of true Succession Tell me sharpe needle wheerwith her lively skill Dearest Mira since thou hast Love with the Tresses of thy Chestnutt haire You may vow I not forgett (Herrick) Towle towle gentle Bell for a soule (Denham) I loved A Lasse, but I dare not shew it Here Lyres Judge Richardson within this Chest Who Sayes the times doe learning disallow (Cowley) The play, great Sir, is done, yet needs must feare (Cowley) Smectymnuus, the Goblin makes me start (Cleveland) Name Eccho who this new Religion grounded? Roundhead Coblers and coopers and the rest (Shirley) While thus I hang, you threatned see (Strode) Saint George for England here doth rest (Zouch Townly) Our upland people are full of thoughts Goe bashfull muse, thy message is to one (Randolph) Sweet heard you not fames latest breath whearso (Randolph) He is a parricide to his mothers name (Randolph) Listen Gallants to my words (Shirley) Tis Tomkins, glad spectators, whom you see Reader behold the Counterfeit of him The Muses that sung your birth and morne Brauely resolved, great hearts, I see some good (William Taylor) Reader I was borne and cryed (Hoskins) Know then my brethren heaven is cleere (Quarles) To make Charles a great King and give him no power (N.N.) The pawnes have all the sport and beare the sway (Cowley?) This was the man, the glory of the gowne (Denham?) I pitty thee, dull Soule, who ere thou art (J. Paulin)

H18 22 22v 22v 23 23 23v 23v 24 24v 25 25v

A58

C50 83 83 83v 83v 84 84

26 26 27v 28 28v 28v

130v

29 29v 30 30v 30v 33 33 33v 34 34 35 36 36v 36v 37v (Continued)

“Rolling Archetypes” 207 H17 Come hether Apollos bounsing girl (Cleveland) It is noe Coranto newes I undertake (J.C[leveland].) Leave off vaine Satyrist, and doe not thinke Why how now sacred Epigrammatist (Wilde) Aske me noe more whether doth stray (Strode) Ile tell you true whereon doth light (Strode) Profane did not thy cursed hand waxe faint (J. Gregorie)71 Hate me deare soule, and say noe moe you love (Alexander Pennecuik) Quid mihi si facies, nigra est? hoc Caeste colore Papa noster qui es in Roma, maledicetur nomen tuum Tom I commend thy Care of all I know (Henry Fitzjeffrey) Death was his freest patron for he gave for all the ship-wracks, and the liquid graves (Henry King) Now, now’s the time soe oft by truth (Herrick) Ah posthumus our yeeres hence flye (Herrick) To my revenge, and to her desperate feares (Herrick) Sweetest Love Since wee must part (Herrick) Why doe not all fresh maides appeare (Herrick) Ile dote noe more, nor shall mine eyes (Herrick) Such as doe Trophies striue to raise (Massinger) Why by Such a brittle Stone Now that I want a faithful post to her When Cruell time enforced mee (Owen Felltham) Damon my beauty doth adore The modest dawning in thy Cheekes doth live All you that will noe longer/to a monarch be subjected (Weever) There are who know what once today it was (Randolph) May[d]: Stand off and let me take the ayre (Cleveland) Stay Lady, should I answere, then (Cleveland) Nor scapes he soe our Dinner was soe good (Cleveland)

H18

A58

C50

38 39 40 40v 41 41v 41v 42 42 42v 42v 42v 43 43v 47 50v

84 89 95

50v 51

95

51v 52

106v

54v 54v 56

74 74v 82

56v 57v 57v

100 116v

58v 59

121

59v 60v (Continued)

208

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating H17

Bee Dumbe yee Beggars of the ryming trade (Cleveland) Sir Roger from a zealous peece of freeze (Cleveland) Apelles curious eye must gaze upon (Randolph) Ducus keepes house, and it with reason stands (John Heath) White Innocence that now lyes spread (Carew) Dame Hecuba fye bee not coy, that looke (S. R [owlands?].) Down with Christs picture Zealous Busy cryes (T[homas] W[eever?]) Here lyes wise and valiant dust (Cleveland) Thou Cozen to great madames, and allayes (Randolph) How much more blest are trees then men (Randolph) Oyez if any man or woman Flea bitten Synode, an Assembly brewed (Cleveland) What? Providence? and yet a Scottish crew? (Cleveland) Wee singe of Athens, and another Greece (Cleveland?) Oh that I could but vote my selfe a poet (Cleveland) Tush let them keepe him if they can Bee gone thou fiery feaver from mee, now be gone The spring’s coming on, and our spirits begin Hope whose weake being ruind is (Cowley) Dear Hope, Earth’s Dowry, and heavens Debt (Crashaw) Gaze after the ascending Larke I saw a vision yesternight (Cleveland) Here Doctor Lambe the Conjurer lyes Why should we not accuse thee of a crime (Randolph) Damon my beauty doth adore72 For shame thou everlasting wooer (Cleveland) Hang out a flagg and gather pence a peece (Cleveland) Accipe dum dolet, post morbum medicus olet Not that I would be counted Coy (S[amson]. Briggs) Lay that Sullen Garland by thee

H18

A58

C50

61v 63v 64v 66 66v 66v 67v 68 68

122

69 69v 70 71 73 74 77 78 79v 80 80v 81v 82 83v 84 84v 84v 85v

109

86v 86v 88 (Continued)

“Rolling Archetypes” 209 H17 Where Sainted Sleepers measured have 42v Hayle thou true model of a cursed whore (Carew) Hard hearted faire if thou wilt not consent A peecefull minde goes homely clad (T[homas] Ast[on?]) Returne, returne thou much profaned Ring You doe well fairest, although soe many (Oldisworth) Wormes bayte for fish, heres a great change Come my Clarinda, wee’ll consume (J. Paulin) Graunt me my kinder fates, even when you please (J. Paulin) If from a Ladies Garter sprung that order Fuller of wish, then hope me thinkes it is Imprimis hee was marryed late When love with unconfined winges (Lovelace) What want’st thou, that thou art in this sad taking? Saw you the Cloake at Church to day (Cleveland?) In this Distinctiue name (William Hudson) Since thou art fledd, nere more for to appeare (Peter Calfe) Reader who ere thou art that goest this way (Peter Calfe) Weepe yee Clarenses, weepe all about Asculapi tandem sapi Lady when words want manners, & neglect (Dr. Bulwer) Here lyes Bishop would be Farwell faire virgin, may my tender eyes (Peter Calfe) Here Lyes interr’d beneath this Stone (Peter Calfe) Can man be Silent, and not praises finde Beaumont and Fletcher, wonders of the age (Peter Calfe) The play is done, yet something we must Say (Peter Calfe) Love’d Relique of my deare departed Saint (Peter Calfe)

H18

A58

C50

88v 89 89v 90 90v 91 91v 92 92v 93 93v 9473 94v74 95 95 95v 96 96v 96v 97 97 97v 98 98v 98v 99 99v 100

36

210

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating

Appendix 3 (Overlap of Harv. MS Eng. 626, Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50, Folger MS V.a.96, and Hunt. MS HM 172—italicized first lines indicate poems not in H626) H626 Clara meis Rupella malis quae sola tot hostes I Rochell famous for my woes alone Bella inter gemnos quisquam Civilia fratres Betwixt two Brethren Civill war & worse Vitam mortiferis exercet Miles in armis To be in Armes it is the Soldiours life The world’s a bubble. And the life of Man Ill busied man why shouldst thou take such care Deare throwe that flattring glasse awaie (Henry Reynolds) Deare rip my hart and see Why were [we] Maides made Wives Deare Mistress, wheresoever you doe rest Is shee not wondrous faire? O but I see (William Lewis) Sweetest love I doe not goe (Donne) As one that strives being sicke (Carew) The glimmering tapers dropping ‘bout thy hearse (R.Thompson) Goe happie Couple (If that I may call) (Gervais Warmestrey) Come then, and like two Doves with silver winges (Herrick) When by sadd fate from hence (Felltham) When deare I doe but thinke on thee (Felltham) Why by such a brittle stone I love the face where sits Now that I want a faithfull post to her See’st thou those Jewells that shee weares (Herrick) Those curious locks soe aptly twin’d (Carew) Send back againe my hart to mee I praie thee sweet to mee bee kind Feare not deare love that I’le reveale (Carew) What meanes this strangenesse now of late (Ayton) You glorious trifles of the East (Wotton) If Narcissus Foolishe Boye I burne, and cruell you in vaine (Carew) Nowe shee burnes as well as I (Carew) Hide not thy Love & mine shall bee

C50

F96

HM172

1 2 3 3v 4 4v 6 7

1v 1v 2 2v 3 3 4 5

11r 12

7 7v

12v

8

15

9v

1 1 1v 1v 2v 3 3v

72v

73v

4 4v

75v 75v

4v 5v 6v

74 74v 74v 7675

7 7 7 7v 7v

76 76v 76v 76v 77

8 8v 9v 9v

77 77v

10v

78r 78v (Continued)

“Rolling Archetypes” 211

You that can looke through Heaven and tell the stares (Fletcher) Come yee swarmes of thoughts and bring (John Grange) Not that I wishe my Mistres (John Grange) Blinde Beautie, if it bee a losse (John Grange) Haile Marie, mother of thy Father Mother of night, and all sad thoughts that love Why did you faine both sighs and teares to gaine (D. Shirley) Unto those hands, where whitenesse onely dwells Sleepe close not up myne eies, and if thou doe Deare give mee a thousand kisses If you do love as well as I (Edward, Ld. Herbert of Cherbury) You that will a wonder knowe (Carew) When cruell time enforced mee (Owen Felltham) That wee may still bee true Must you needs goe? hard hart necessitie Ah gentle winde, if e’re thou dids’t suspire Hermes flew downe from heaven with hue and Crye Princes, which by the right of true succession Tell mee sharpe Nee[d]le, wherewith her lively skill Dearest Mira, since thou hast Love with the Tresses of thy Chestnutt haire Yow maie vowe I not forget (Herrick) Nowe, now’s the time soe oft by truth (Herrick) What’s that wee see from farre? The spring of daie (Herrick) Ah Posthumus our yeares hence flye (Herrick) E’re I goe hence, and bee noe more (Herrick) Goe and with this parting kisse (Herrick) You have beheld a smileing rose (Herrick) To my revenge, and to her desperate feares (Herrick) Ladie, I intreate you weare (Herrick) Since lovely sweete, much like unto a Dewe (Herrick) Sweetest love, since wee must part (Herrick) I’le dote noe more, nor shall mine eies (Herrick)

H626

C50

12

80r

13v 14 15 17v

63r 53v 80v

17v

81

F96

HM172

22v

15

18 18 18 18v

81 81 81v

19 19v

82 82 82v

20 21 21

83 83

21v 22

83v

22 22v 22v 23

83v 84 84 84

26

86v

29

89

31v 33v 34v 35v

91v 92v 93v 94v

35v 36v

94v76 116v

37v 38

95

(Continued)

212

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating H626

Why doe not all freshe maides appeare (Herrick) Sir as for him that told mee first ‘twas true (Randolph?) Sir that same darksome cloude it is o’repast (Randolph) Within this pretious stone there lyes For mee to goe about to give, what you Deare Losse to tell the world I greive weere true (Corbett) Accept thou shrine of my dead Saint (King) Dum Rex Paulinas accessit gratus ad aras (Randolph) When gratefull Charles went to Paules hollowed shrine (Randolph) How manie of thy Captives (Love) complaine (Randolph) Quid Templum abscindit? Quo luxque diesque recessit? What rends the Temple’s vaile? Where is daye gone (Randolph) Ben doe not leave the stage (Randolph) I Chanct Sweet Lesbia’s voice to heare (Randolph) Vox Helenam, vultus Hecubam, te Lesbia clamat (Randolph) By thy lookes Hecuba, Helen by thy song (Randolph) Prima tibit periit soboles Dilecta Maria (Randolph) Thy first Birth marie was unto a Tombe (Randolph) Inviditne tibi Tellus tua gaudia coelum (Randolph) Why att thy Christening did it raine (Deare Prince) (Randolph) Let Linus and Amphions Lute (Randolph) Say in a dance, how shall wee goe (Randolph) Fam’d stymphal’ I have heard thy Birdes in flight (Randolph) Jove sawe the Heavens form’d in a little glasse (Randolph) When Jove sawe Archimedes world of glasse (Randolph) I wounder what should Madam Lesbia meane Happie the man that all his daies hath spent (Randolph)

C50

F96

HM172

39

95v

23r

15v

40

97

25v

17

41

98v

26v 27 28v

17v 18 19

27

29v

20

42v

98v77

15v

10v

44

101

44v

101

44v 45v

101 97v

9

5v

46v

98

6v

46v

98

6v

46v

102

46v

102

47

102

47

102

47 47 47v

131v78 21r 10279 21v

14 14

48

102

21v

14v

48v

102

22

14v

48v

102v

49v

103

38v

41v 41v

(Continued)

“Rolling Archetypes” 213

Whoe in the world with busie reason pries (Randolph) Ver erat, et flores per apertum Libera Campum (Randolph) The Spring was come, and all the fields growe fine (Randolph) Ah wretch, in thy Corinna’s love unblest (Randolph) Would you commence a Poet Sir and be (Randolph) Faelicem Arthuram, nullos ibi credo Poetas (Randolph) Goe sordid Earth, and hope not to bewitch (Randolph) Is thy poore Barke becalm’d and for’t to stay (Randolph) My Lalage when behold (Randolph) Sweet Lydia take this Masque, and shrowde (Randolph) Thou hast thy houndes to hunt the timorous hare Such as due Trophies strive to raise (Massinger) I have noe humour to adore the face (Shirley) Mother of Night and all sad thoughts of Love (Shirley) Would you knowe what’s soft? I dare (Shirley) Nature, that wash’d her hands in Milke (Ralegh) Damon my beautie doth adore Why should wee not accuse thee of a Crime (Randolph) Coy Caelia dos’t thou see (Randolph) Harke, harke how in everie Grove (Shirley) I can noe longer hold, my Bodies growes (Shirley?) Ladie what’s your face to mee (Shirley) Helpe mee wonder! heere’s a Booke (Jonson) Since all men that I come among (John Grange) Or scorne, or pittie on mee take (Jonson) Pride, Vaineglorie, hope, and feare Come live with me and be my love (Donne) Sitting and readie to bee drawne (Jonson) Painter you are come but may bee gone (Jonson) Reade, and pittie as you goe (H. Harrington)

H626

C50

50

103v

F96

HM172

51 51

118v

54v

104v

55

104v

55 55v

65

33

22

58

105

37

22

58 59

105 106

60 60

106v

62v 63

108v 108v

22v

63

108v

22v

15

63

109

63v 64

109 109

64 64v 65

109v 110 110

65 65v 66

110v 110v

37v 38

25

111v 112

38v 39 39 41 42v

25 25v 26 26v 27

112v

40v

26v

66v 67 67 67v 68v 69v

111

(Continued)

214

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating H626

Heard you not lately of a Man (James Waters) Whether are all her false oaths blowne (Herrick) I came from England into France (Thomas Goodwyn) Goe perjur’d man, and if thou e’re return (Herrick) Doe but consider this small dust (Jonson) Threescore and Tenn, the Age, and Life of Man (Samuel Rowlands) Love sicke all o’re, and little lacke of dead (Carew?) Goe thou gentle whistling winde (Carew) Flye, O flye thou lazie groane (“F”) The Sunn, which doth the greatest comfort brings (Beaumont) When by thee carelesse I devising sitt You’le aske perhaps wherefore I staye (Carew) The modest dawning in thy cheekes doth live Since Lovely Sweete much like unto a dew (Herrick) If each mans fault were on his forehead writ (N[icholas] H[are]?) When by thy scornes faire Murdresse I am dead (Donne) Hee is starke madd, who ever says (Donne) To what a cumbersome unrulinesse (Donne) Helpe Mistresse, Help, the flames of my Desire I now thinke Love is rather deafe then blind (Jonson) For loves sake, kiss mee once againe (Jonson) Hee that when hee lusts dares sweare Beautie which all men admires Thy outward forme upon my breast Love chill’d with cold, and missing in the skies (Reynolds?) Though I am young and cannot tell (Jonson) Wee must not part, as others doe Will not my Bells ringe Louder yet must I Come with our voices let us warre (Jonson) Leave Cloris, leave, the woods, the Chace Tell me o gratnes whence proceeds thy pride Stand of let mee take the ayre Looke my onely dearest on my Love-like heart (Carew) Here lyes wise & valiant dust (Cleveland)

C50

70 11380

F96

HM172

44v

28v

44

70v

113v

73

11381

73 73v

113 115

46

29v

73v

115v

46

29v

73v 74 74v

115v 116

46 47v 48

29v 30

76 76

116 116v

49v 49v

31v

76v

116v 116v 50

32

32v 33

76v

45v, 72

77

120

77 77v 78

117v 117v

50v 51

78

118

51

78v 78v 79 79 79

118 118v 118v 117v

79v 79v

120v 120v 120v

80 80v 81

51v 52 52v 53 53 54 55

121 121v 122

“Rolling Archetypes” 215

Notes 1 Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 134, 346–47. 2 For a discussion of Westminster and Christ Church connections and of the Christ Church poetic community, see Raymond Anselment, “The Oxford University Poets and Caroline Panegyric,” John Donne Journal 3 (1984): 184–86, and John Gouws (ed.), Nicholas Oldisworth’s Manuscript (Bodleian MS. Don.c.24 (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Renaissance English Text Society, 2009), xvii–xxix. Margaret Crum (ed.), The Poems of Henry King (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 5, points out that Westminster School alumni included Jonson, Cowley, George Herbert, Randolph, Alabaster, Strode, Corbett, Cartwright, Giles Fletcher, Martin Lluellyn, Jasper Mayne, and John Dryden. 3 Other Oxford poets whose work was collected in Christ Church anthologies include Henry King, Daniel Price, Benjamin Stone, Jeramial Terrent, Thomas Mottershed, and Nicholas Oldisworth. 4 Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts (Aldershot, U.K.: Scolar Press, 1992), 116–29. 5 For the first three of these manuscripts, see the physical descriptions in Joshua Eckhardt, Manuscript Verse Collectors and the Politics of Anti-Courtly Love Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 235–37 (A30), 242–43 (S17), 279–80 (W41). 6 Eckhardt, 119. 7 There is a good discussion of this poem in Andrew McRae, Literature, Satire and the Early Stuart State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 75–82. 8 Usually the line begins “Renouned Spenser …” 9 Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (eds.), The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 2.60, state that this poem “is Herrick’s most popular MS poem in terms of both circulation and longevity.” They note that there are some seventy-one manuscript and print copies of the work in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources. 10 It survives in at least nineteen manuscripts, in some at the start of a collection: Bod. MSS Eng. Poet. e.14, f. 2 and Rawl. Poet. 206, p. 1; BL MSS Add. 37683, f. 1 and Sloane 1446, f. 2. The other manuscripts of the poem listed in the Folger Index are: Folger MSS J.a.1, f. 93, V.a.97, p. 45, V.a.125, f. 10, and V.a.170, p. 106; Hunt. MS HM 198.1, p. 109; Bod. MSS Ash. 47, f. 8, Eng. Poet. c.50, f. 47, Eng. Poet. e.97, p. 14, Rawl. Poet. 172, f. 143, Rawl. Poet. 206, p. 1 and Wood D.19(2), f. 72; Yale Osb. MS b.356, p. 49; BL MSS Add. 4457, f. 7, Harley 6931, f. 39, Sloane 542, f. 29v, and Sloane 1792, f. 28. This poem is the first one in first of two printed editions of Corbett’s poetry, Certain Elegant Poems, Written by Dr. Corbet, Bishop of Norwich (1647). 11 One manuscript has as a title of the poem “The itinerary in the North. 10mo.Aug. 1618” (Hunt. MS 198.1, p. 109). 12 For a discussion of Corbett’s protoroyalism and its influence, see McRae, Literature, Satire, and the Early Stuart State, 155–87. Nicholas Oldisworth, another Christ Church poet, composed an imitative poem in this subgenre of the journey, “Iter Australe, 1632. Or, A journey southwards.” See Gouws (ed.), Nicholas Oldisworth’s Manuscript, 104–8. 13 Peter Beal, comp., Index of English Literary Manuscripts (London and New York), vol. 2, pt. 1, p. 155. Some of Strode’s poems appeared in various print

216

14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating

miscellanies from the 1640s on forward and his play, The Floating Island (acted before King Charles at Christ Church in 1636) was published in 1655, but a collected edition of his work did not appear in print until Bertram Dobell (ed.), The Poetical Works of William Strode (1600–1645) (London, [pub. by the editor], 1907). Margaret Forey, who edited Strode’s poetry from the authorial manuscript, Oxford Corpus Christi College 325, “A Critical Edition of the Poetical Works of William Strode, excluding The Floating Island” (Oxford B. Litt. thesis, 1966), has been working on a critical edition of Strode’s work. For a recent study of Strode, see Adam Smyth, “‘Art Reflexive’: The Poetry, Sermons, and Drama of William Strode (1601?–1645),” SP 103.4 (Fall 2006): 436–64. Hobbs 58. See also Beal, 2. 2.43. Hobbs 119. Selective collation of poems in W41 and S17, however, reveals a considerable number of differences between the two manuscripts. On f. 1v we find “Daniell leare his Book. Witness William Strode.” Later additions follow, but also Leare’s handwriting appears in reverse transcription on ff. 163v-117, followed also by later additions. Margaret Forey, “Manuscript Evidence and the Author of ‘Aske me no more’: William Strode, not Thomas Carew,” English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700 12 (2005): 180–200 (at 188). This might be a mistaken reference to the poet William Basse. The other main version of the poem ends “They straight of life bereave him.” Beal, 2.2.359, notes that the poem is attributed to Strode in St. John’s College, Cambridge MS S.32, ff. 1-2, that Bod. MS Ash. 38, p. 119 attributes the poem to “E. Bass,” and that in Elizabeth Lane’s Manuscript (Aberdeen University Library MS 29, pp. 96–7) and in Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 246, f. 10, it is anonymous. A38 reverses the order of the last two stanzas of the poem. OED: doubles: 6. A sharp turn in running, as of a hunted hare. In Wits Interpreter, these lines read: And ore the craggy mountains, To the woods and shady groves Enricht with Silver Fountains. When gliding streams with murmurs sweet And pretty Birds with wonder Do carrol notes, with their shrill throats, And Shoutings fill the air with thunder. Now to the rocks, to the fens, to the caves (67)

24 On the common practice of transcribing poetry from memory, which resulted in variants not attributable to scribal error, see J. B. Leishman, “‘You Meaner Beauties of the Night’, A Study in Transmission and Transmogrification,” The Library, 4th ser. 26 (1945): 99–121. 25 There is a rare eighty-six line poem on the same subject, “Of the Hunting of the Hare,” found in two manuscripts: Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 176, f. 33r-v, and BL MS Add. 22582, f. 13. 26 For example, see the variant readings in lines 31, 38, and 39. 27 I discuss the different texts of this poem in Chapter 2.

“Rolling Archetypes” 217 28 “And bann and braule, and say thee nay; / Her feeble force will yeld at length.” 29 I also (with Laura Estill) reproduce this poem in “Manuscript Circulation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare, ed. Arthur F. Kinney (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 55. 30 The first twelve pages of this manuscript are missing. Other hands take the collection through p. 333, after which pp. 334–400 are blank, more material is inserted on pp. 401–9, and 410–540 are blank preceding the remains of ripped-out pages at the end. 31 This manuscript also has a section of poems (pp. 269–332) by Nicholas Oldisworth, who was a member of the Christ Church community. See Gouws (ed.), Nicholas Oldisworth’s Manuscript, xlii-xliii. 32 Hobbs 116–19. 33 There are, of course, poems shared by the three manuscripts other than Morley’s that do not appear in Westminster MS 41: for example, William Strode’s epitaph for Mary Prideaux, “Sleep pretty one, while I” (BL MSS Sloane 1792, f. 87v and Add. 30982, f. 8v; Folger MS V.a.170, p. 81). It is interesting that Morley’s, Leare’s and Aubrey’s manuscripts are apparently the only ones that have the answer poem to Richard Corbett’s bawdy piece, “Upon a Courtesan’s Lute”: Upon a Curtesants [sic] lute Pretty lute when I am gone Tell thy Mistris heare was one That hither came with full intent To play upon her instrument. an answer my pretty booke when I am gone Tell thy master there was none That in her heart could be content To bee at his commandement (W17, f. 36v) 34 “Notes on the Physical Characteristics of some Manuscripts of the Poems of Donne and of Henry King,” The Library, 4th ser., 16 (1961): 121–32. 35 See Forey, “Manuscript Evidence and the Author of ‘Aske me no more,’” 188. 36 See the discussion of this manuscript in Chapter 3. 37 Starting in 1640 with the collection Wits Recreations (1640), much of this work found its way into printed miscellanies—such as Parnassus Biceps (1656), The Harmony of the Muses (1654), and Sportive Wit (1656)—some of which collections were reprinted many times. 38 Hobbs 74–86. 39 Crum (ed.), Poems of Henry King, 48, says Manne is the scribe who copied for Henry King most of Bod. MS Eng. Poet. e.30. 40 The first ten poems in this manuscript are also found in the manuscript compiled by Thomas Manne, BL MS Add. 58215. Hobbs 69, points out the

218

41

42

43 44

45 46

47 48

49 50

Multiple Manuscripts Circulating

connections between Calfe and Manne. Selective collation of poems the two manuscripts share underscores their closeness. Rhodes Dunlap (ed.), The Poems of Thomas Carew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), lxxiv, says the 35 Carew poems are in roughly the same order as the 1640 edition, but that the “variant readings [in Harley 6917] are for the most part plausible, and probably authentic; the total impression is that of versions preliminary to those printed in 1640.” Dunlap, lxxiv, n. 1, says “At a few points … [Harley 6917] preserves an apparently sound reading where the 1640 text is faulty.” L. C. Martin (ed.), The Poems English, Latin and Greek of Richard Crashaw (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), lxxvi–lxxvii, discusses H17 and H18. See also the discussion of these manuscripts in Thomas O. Calhoun, Laurence Heyworth, and J. Robert King (eds.), The Collected Works of Abraham Cowley, vol. 2: Poems (1656), Part I: The Mistress (Newark, DL: University of Delaware Press and London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1993),168, which points out the association of H17 with literary circles at Cambridge University. I also indicate the relationship of this manuscript to H17 and H18 in Appendix 2. The relationship of these four manuscripts is discussed in Linda Marilyn Jones, “A Critical Edition of a 17th Century Poetical Manuscript Miscellany (HM 172)” (Ph.D. Diss, University of Calgary, 1980), lvii–lxvii. She suggests on the basis of textual evidence that HM 172 and V.a.96 “were copied from a common exemplar” (lxi). See Appendix 3. See the anecdote from William Winstanley reproduced in G. Thorn-Drury (ed.), The Poems of Thomas Randolph (London: Frederick Etchells & Hugh Macdonald, 1929), xiii. Noting the similarities of HM172 and F96, Hobbs p. 125, says that they were not copied from one another: “the archetypal collection may have been on loose sheets … though the contents of individual foldings would remain together, whatever happened to the order of the sheets.” There is a useful discussion of the relationship of HM172 to F96, H626, C50, H17 and H18 in Cain and Connelly (eds.), Herrick, 2.10–11. Cain and Connolly claim, 2.14, that the archetype, which has been lost, is one that all these manuscripts were copied “radially.” Jones, lxv, posits a “master collection” from which all these manuscripts were copied. Mark Bland, “Francis Beaumont’s Verse Letters to Ben Jonson and ‘The Mermaid Club,’” English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700 12 (2005): 139–79 (at 142–43). Bland, 143, says that, with regard to this poem, “the texts of Houghton 626 and HM 172 are almost exact copies of one another and must derive from the same underlying exemplar.” He has pointed out that, in their versions of Francis Beaumont’s poem “The Sun (which doth the greatest comfort bring),” Folger MS V.a.96, Harv. MS English 626, and Hunt. MS HM 172 seems to have descended from a source manuscript that, because of an eyeskip, omits l. 80. McRae, 155–87. W41 (f. 24v) and S17 (f. 66) have “If we at Woodstock have not pleased those” while the former has also Barton Holiday’s “Tis not my person or my play” (f. 24v). The more famous poems on the event by Peter Heylyn (“Whoop Holiday why then ‘twill ne’er be better”), by William Meredith (“At Christ Church marriage act before the King”), and by an anonymous author (“Brag on old Christ Church, never fret not grieve”), the last of which appears in S17 (f. 16), appear in several manuscripts. The Folger Index lists the appearance of

“Rolling Archetypes” 219

51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

the poem about Corbett’s forgetting the text of his sermon, “A [or “The”] reverend dean with his band starch’d clean,” in eleven manuscripts. See the text of this poem in ESL, H17. Texts of these poems are found in J. A. W. Bennett and H. R. Trevor-Roper (eds.), The Poems of Richard Corbett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 170 and 105–6. For a discussion of Corbett’s relationship with Buckingham and of his panegyrics for him, see McRae, 164–67. Bennett and Trevor-Roper (eds.), The Poems of Richard Corbett, 170. For a discussion of these texts, see Adam Smyth, “Profit and Delight”: Printed Miscellanies in England, 1640-1682 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2004). In italic hand; the main hand is a hybrid secretary/italic. This version has “derision” for “passion.” In different hybrid secretary/italic hand from main hand of manuscript. In a different hand. A different, sloppier hand for this poem and for “When Medow growes …” Morley’s hand again. Written in an especially small hand. Different, larger slanted hand. Also on f. 164. In italic hand; main hand is hybrid secretary/italic. This ms has a partial version of this poem. One stanza of Jonson’s poem from the “Charis” sequence. Another hand writing in lighter ink. Attributed, in various manuscripts, to Dr. Richard Love, Henry Noel, Alexander Nowell, and William Strode. Attributed to Robert Chamberlain in BL MS Add. 47111, f. 10, where it is titled “A meditation in A garden by Mr. R. C.” Yale Osb. MS b.4, f. 22 has a different ending, lacking the last 2 stanzas and two lines before them. The poem also appears in Harv. MS Eng. 626, f. 9v. J. Gregorie, chaplain to Brian Duppa at Christ Church. The title of poem is “In Iconoclaseum” (elsewhere “On the breaking Christ Church Window”) in Bod. Eng. Poet. e.97, p. 43. Also on f. 56 (above) and C50, f. 100. New hand. The first three of the four numbered stanzas are in the new hand, but the fourth on f. 95 is in the main hand of the manuscript. Also on f. 133. Both copies read “Diamonds” for “Jewells.” Also on f. 37 Also on f. 101. Beyond f. 122, C50 is in different hand from that of ff. 52-122. Also on f. 131v. Also on f. 133. Also on f. 39.

7

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts at the Inns of Court and in London

One of the richest socioliterary environments in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England was the Inns of Court. Called by Ben Jonson the “nourceries of humanity and liberty,”1 they provided an especially rich intellectual and cultural environment conducive to literary production as well as to critical political thinking. Inns men produced revels and entertainments, translations, and works in both traditional and newly revived poetic and prose genres (the epigram, the love lyric, the love elegy, the verse letter, formal verse satire, the essay, the paradox, and the character).2 Many Inns writers and translators, in the context of competitive versifying and wit-combats among friends and colleagues, formed social bonds that carried over into their lives beyond the period of their residency at the Inns, into the world of courtly employment and parliamentary service, for example—some of them forming urban social groups or “clubs” meeting at such places as the Mermaid and Mitre taverns. Michelle O’Callaghan, David Colclough, and others have described the social, political, and cultural significance of the relationships of these groups and coteries, which included the court of Prince Henry,3 especially as they were associated in the Jacobean period with issues of free speech and parliamentary constitutional power.4 In this environment, as at the university, poems probably first circulated in manuscript as what Harold Love has called “separates,” that is single sheets, bifolia, or small quires or booklets.5 This was the form in which they were most perishable, unless later bound together or copied into a larger anthology or miscellany. They depended for their survival on their subsequent transcription in larger collections in many of which we can detect the traces of literary exchange and competition. It is useful to look “bibliogeographically” at the field of manuscript transmission and compilation of verse, as Harold Love suggests we do,6 paying attention to literary production and reception in specific sites. In this chapter, I examine the manuscript circulation and compilation in the Inns of Court and their urban environs from the late 1590s through the first third of the seventeenth century in a socioliterary context. In this environment, there was a social and intellectual elite present in great

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts 221 numbers: the Inns, for example, housed over 1000 members who interacted socially with other urban professionals as well as with many individuals from the politically active classes, some of whom came from the country to London for parliamentary sessions, for business in the law courts in Westminster, and for socializing at the royal court(s). This critical mass of literate individuals formed a variety of related social networks within which individual texts and groups of texts could circulate:7 many poets and their colleagues functioned within the environment of particular Inns of Court (Gray’s Inn, Lincoln’s Inn, Inner Temple, and Middle Temple), but they and others were often involved as well in various parliaments, London tavern culture and “clubbing,” the secretariats of important political figures such as the Earl of Essex and Sir Robert Cecil (later, Earl of Salisbury), and the patronage circles of such figures as the Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland and Lucy, Countess of Bedford. The texts they produced, mixed with others from the social networks of which they were part, were preserved in a number of manuscript collections surviving from the period where the juxtaposed texts often reflect the social proximity of their authors. In her study of the literary culture of the Inns of Court in the 1560s, Jessica Winston claims that there were four distinct waves of literary activity in this environment: the 1550s and early 1560s, the 1590s through the first few years of the seventeenth-century, the 1610s, and the 1630s and 1640s. She applies to the culture of the Inns Richard Helgerson’s argument that in this period of literary history age cohorts or generations mattered, but also she relates the crests of literary activity to the opportunities open to Inns residents looking for social and professional advancement.8 Because the texts of the first period Winston examines are not primarily lyrics, I concentrate on the second, third and fourth periods she mentions. Within a number of manuscript collections, we can discover the contours of some literary coteries or circles at the Inns and in London within which major and minor poets functioned. Inns writers whose poems survive in manuscript collections include Sir Francis Bacon (GI, 1576),9 Thomas Lodge (LI, 1578), Sir John Harington (LI, 1581), Thomas Campion (GI, 1586), Christopher Brooke (LI 1587), Sir John Davies (MT, 1588), Sir Benjamin Rudyerd (MT, 1590), John Donne (LI, 1592), Charles Best (MT 1592), John Marston (MT 1592), Sir Simeon Steward (GI, 1593), John Hoskins (MT, 1593), Nicholas Hare (IT 1596), John Vaughan (IT, 1596), John Beaumont (IT, 1597), Sir Thomas Overbury (MT, 1598), Sir John Grange (LI, 1604), Sir John Harington (LI 1608), Richard Brathwait (GI 1609), Francis Quarles (LI 1610), William Browne (IT, 1611), Thomas Carew (MT, 1612), Edward Herbert (Lord Herbert of Cherbury) (GI, 1614), John Ford (GI 1614), Thomas May (GI, 1615), Henry King (honorary member, LI, 1618), Henry Blount (GI, 1620), Mildway Fane (LI 1622), Robert Ellice (GI, 1627), Dudley (Lord) North (IT, 1622), Sir John Suckling (GI 1627), Sir Thomas Salusbury (IT 1631), and James Shirley (GI 1634). Some Inns

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memberships were honorary, but the individuals were free to, and often did, participate in the social life of the Inns. A number of these men served in various Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline parliaments: Bacon (1572, 1584, 1586, 1589, 1593, 1597, 1601, 1604, 1614), Davies (1597, 1601, 1621), Donne (1601, 1604), Herbert (1601, 1604), Hoskins (1604, 1614, 1628), Steward (1614), Rudyerd (1621, 1624, 1625, 1626, 1628, 1640 [Apr.], 1640 [Nov.]), and North (1628, 1640 [Apr.], 1640 [Nov.]). Hoskins and Donne appear in Thomas Coryat’s letter to the “Sirenical Gentlemen” who met regularly at the Mitre and Mermaid Taverns: the larger group also included Donne’s friends Sir Henry Goodyer, George Garrard, Christopher Brooke, Jonson, and Richard Martin as well as William Hakewill, Inigo Jones, Hugh Holland, John Bond, and Sir Robert Cotton, several of whom contributed comic commendatory poems to various editions of that outlandishly witty travel-book, Coryat’s Crudities.10 The Latin poem referring to a tavern drinking club (“Convivium Philosophicum”)11 refers to Jones, Martin, Goodyer, Donne, and Brooke as well as to Arthur Ingram, Thomas Harriot, Sir Lionel Cranfield, Sir Robert Phelips, Sir Henry Neville, Richard Connock, Hoskins, and John West, some of whom, like Phelips, were politically and/or financially powerful individuals. We may not be able to put our hands on the direct evidence of all the connections among these individuals, but we can see a picture emerging from a number of the manuscript collections of a group of poets who were associated, however loosely, with one another and with intellectually and sociopolitically elite groups at the Inns of Court and in the larger urban environment.12 Like such contemporaries as John Hoskins, Sir John Roe, Sir John Davies, and Sir Francis Bacon, John Donne found his literary voice in the Inns-of-Court environment. In the 1590s, at Lincoln’s Inn, he wrote love elegies, satires, verse epistles, and love lyrics. Some of his pieces were mixed in manuscript collections with works by other authors such as Hoskins, Roe, Davies, Harington, and Bacon.13 Other poems from the urban social environment also made their way into such manuscripts. For example, the two “Dalhousie manuscripts” contain poems by Sir Henry Wotton, Sir Robert Ayton,14 Joshua Sylvester,15 Jonathan Richards, Overbury, Davies, Roe, Francis Beaumont, Sir Walter Ralegh, Campion, and William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke interspersed among a large number of Donne’s poems.16 BL MS Harley 4064, a textually important “Group I” Donne manuscript,17 has pieces by Wotton, Roe, Rudyerd, Jonson, Francis Beaumont, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Harington.18 The “O’Flahertie manuscript” (Harv. MS Eng. 966.5), important as a major collection of Donne’s verse, also has poems interspersed in the collection by Henry Constable, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Sir John Roe, Nicholas Hare, Sir Thomas Woodward, the Earl of Pembroke, Hoskins, Davison, Jonson. In fact, the category of “Dubia” in editions of Donne has been problematic because of the mistake of some editors, early and late, of drawing into the canon of

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts 223 Donne’s writings the work of other writers interspersed with Donne’s own verse in surviving manuscripts as well as in some early printed editions: for example, Roe’s poem to Sir Nicholas Smith (“Sleep, next Society and true friendship”),19 and Hoskins’s popular lyric, “Absence” (“Absence heare my protestation”).20 The poems written by Donne and other Inns authors probably circulated as separates within a very restricted social group. Therefore, there are few manuscript anthologies containing their verse surviving from the 1590s and the first decade and one-half of the seventeenth century. There is a puzzling gap in the manuscript evidence between the time of composition of most of his lyrics and their appearance in the mid-1610s verse collections. They may have been kept close, but, no doubt, they were performed or recited as well as passed on singly or in small groups to various coterie readers.21 Only in the second stage of transmission were they gathered in larger units—for example, in the Skipwith family manuscript (BL MS Add. 25707).22 We have less knowledge of the initial coterie circulation of verse of some Inns-of-Court poets than we do, for instance, of the poems circulating in the 1620s and 1630s at Christ Church, then in London.23

Manuscript Collections with Inns Provenance When we examine English literary manuscripts from the early modern period in order to describe the dissemination of texts and the social connections of their authors, we face several problems. First, what has survived is a small portion of what was circulated and collected. Unless they were bound with other material (either in their own time or later), most of the single sheets and small booklets of poems we know were passed from hand to hand have disappeared,24 often because such “waste paper” was used for what we politely call “hygienic purposes.” Even larger collections of materials, unless they had the good fortune to be preserved in a muniment room or other safe places in a substantial house of a wealthy family, had little chance of survival over the centuries. Second, although some small or larger collections of texts may have begun in a particular location or environment, they did not necessarily, like those individuals who possessed them, remain in place, instead moving from, for example, the university to London, or London to provincial sites, even, as is the case with the famous Devonshire manuscript (BL MS Add. 17492), from country to country (England to Scotland). Third, although some compilations of texts were the work of a single individual, who either transcribed texts in his or her own hand or who hired a professional scribe to do the writing, many surviving manuscript collections were the product of several individuals and were formed over a period of time—sometimes decades.

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If we are looking for manuscripts associated with Inns-of-Court authors and/or compiled in the Inns-of-Court environment, then, we need to be careful not to make untenable claims about the relationships of authors with one another or with the environment in which they functioned. Because he tried to make his best guesses about the origins, dates, and provenance of the hundreds of manuscripts he examined for CELM, Peter Beal associated particular documents with various locations: either Oxford or Cambridge universities, the royal court, the great house, or the Inns of Court (and the London urban environment outside the Court). In particular cases, he identified manuscripts that moved, for example, from Oxford to London, as their compilers entered the world outside academia: sometimes the route he delineated was from an Oxford college such as Christ Church to one of the Inns of Court. BL MS Sloane 1446 is a case in point: it has a fair number of poems that originated in Christ Church, Oxford, but, according to Mary Hobbs, it was probably assembled at the Inns of Court and gathered pieces by such authors from this environment as John Grange, Henry Blount, Robert Ellice, John Hoskins, John Vaughan, the earl of Pembroke, Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, and William Browne of Tavistock.25 We can, of course, attempt to make socioliterary connections between individuals we know to have had family relationships, friendships, or professional affiliations (such as common membership in various parliaments): these might have been direct or at one or two removes. If texts they wrote appear together in a particular manuscript, especially pieces that answer, parody, or refer to the writings of people with whom they had contact, we infer that they were part of what scholars now like to call “social networks.”26 The problem with social networks, however, is that they are not stable, either geographically or temporally. This season’s social network differs from last season’s and from the one that follows. For example, the Lincoln’s Inn of the late Elizabethan era, when John Donne was in residence there, differed from the institution and social milieu of the one to which he returned as a preacher in the midJacobean period.27 Not only had the body of members altered but also, especially given changing Crown-Parliament relations, the political environment had dramatically changed. Sometimes bifolia and poetical quires or booklets that were bound into larger manuscript units either in their own time or later contain poems by authors with obvious social connections. For example, in addition to Sir John Roe’s poem beginning “Sleep, next society” (mentioned above), that author’s poem beginning “The state and mens affaires are the best playes” follows the first poem in Hunt. MS HM 198.2, Donne’s elegy, “Love’s War,” and it is followed by a second poem by Roe attributed in at least one manuscript to Donne,28 “If great men wrong me I will spare my selfe.” Both Roe poems are printed in the 1635 edition of Donne’s verse. Roe was a first cousin of Donne’s close friend,

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts 225 the more famous Sir Thomas Roe, and also cousin to Donne’s longstanding friend George Garrard.29 William Herbert, earl of Pembroke and his friend Sir Benjamin Rudyerd began in an Inns environment and/ or, as Mary Ellen Lamb and Garth Bond suggest in their edition of Pembroke’s verse, at Baynard’s Castle or Penshurst through Rudyerd’s clientage to Sir Robert Sidney.30 Their literary exchanges were later gathered by John Donne, Jr. (with many misattributed pieces) in a printed edition in 1660,31 are an example of literary competition and exchange of the type practiced by other writers in this milieu. The provenance of particular manuscript poetical anthologies or miscellanies of verse and prose might point to the social network or networks out of which the work they contain emerged. For example, one of the manuscripts from the “Conway Papers,” BL MS Add. 23229, not only has work by John Donne and Sir Henry Goodyer, his close friend and a relative of the Conways, but also pieces by the earl of Pembroke, Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, Ben Jonson,32 Sir Henry Wotton, Francis Beaumont, and possibly Hugh Holland.33 The connections of Jonson, Rudyerd, and Pembroke were both through their participation in a social world of Inns men and a London political and social elite, and through the patronage relations of the two non-aristocrats with the Earl.34 Jonson’s three epigrams to Rudyerd celebrate their friendship and idealize Rudyerd as an honest, witty author and as a perceptive judge of others’ writing.35 The Skipwith manuscript (BL MS Add. 25707) has many poems by Donne, but also pieces by such Inns authors as Nicholas Hare, Henry Blount, Robert Ellice, Sir Henry Wotton, the Earl of Pembroke, Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, and Francis Beaumont. Sir William Skipwith’s activities in London as a member of the 1601 and 1604–10 parliaments probably explains his access to works of these poets—though most of the pieces by Donne probably came by way of the family and neighborhood connections with Sir Henry Goodyer, Donne’s closest friend.36 When Francis Davison, the editor behind the largest of the late Elizabethan poetical miscellanies, A Poetical Rapsody (1602, 1608, 1611, 1621), listed among “manuscripts to gett,” “Satyres, Elegies, Epigrams, etc. by John Don” and identified Ben Jonson as a possible source, he did so in an environment in which the poems were circulating: as a member of Gray’s Inn and author of the masque for the Gesta Grayorum (1594–95), Davison knew of the poems of the Lincoln’s Inn poet, at least by hearsay.37 Although there is a lot of guessing involved and some manuscript collections were geographically mobile and/or chronologically broad, there are many documents we can, with some confidence, associate with the Inns of Court. Mary Hobbs, in her invaluable study of seventeenthcentury manuscripts, discusses some of the manuscripts belonging to this environment, identifying the following documents: BL MSS Harley 3910, Lansdowne 777, Add. 25303 and 21422, and Chetham Library

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(Manchester) MS A. 4. 15.38 To these we might add Ros. MS 1083/15, National Art Library MS Dyce 44, Hunt. MS HM 198, part 2, Bod. MSS Add. B. 97 and Douce 280, Folger MS V.a.245, BL MS Add. 33998 and Meisei University MS MR 0799.39 Of this group Harley 3910 and the Add. MSS 25303 and 21433 (the third largely copied from the second) have the closest relationship. What can we learn from these manuscripts about the circulation of texts in the Inns environs and the social connections of those whose verse they contain? Bod. MS Add. B.97, Ros. MS 1083/15 and National Art Library MS Dyce 4440 originate in the 1590s. The first is the late sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century collection compiled by Leweston Fitzjames. He entered the Middle Temple in 1594 and overlapped for three years with Sir John Davies, copying many poems by that Inns writer from the author’s originals. This manuscript’s contents reveal transcription periods in 1595 and 1607–9.41 Apart from its value as a source of Davies’s poetic texts, especially his long poem “Orchestra,” this manuscript also has pieces by other Inns authors: two by Donne (an epigram and the elegy “The Anagram”), one by Campion, pieces by Harington,42 and two translations by Fitzjames of items found in Elizabeth Grymstone’s Miscellanea [1608]), along with an epitaph “on an old miser” by one Robert Delicar (“Here lies a man whom death of life beguil’d” [f. 40]), plus some unique anonymous poems. Three poems from university sources are included: Ben Stone’s epitaph for Owen the Butler of Christ Church,43 a poem “To Sir G. T. K” by James Mabbe of Magdalen College, and a translation of the Latin insignia of the university.44 This manuscript has also original poems by Fitzjames himself. Though there is no evidence to suggest lively social connections among all these writers, certainly their work circulated in the Inns environment. The second collection, Ros. MS 1083/15, contains some 349 poems or poetic excerpts, which James Sanderson speculates were copied over an extended time period from the 1590s through the first quarter of the seventeenth century. It reflects, according to Sanderson, “an interest in things Oxfordian and matters connected with the inns of court.”45 There is a heavy emphasis on satiric epigrams and libels, and (surprisingly, for manuscript anthologies of the period) an almost complete absence of epitaphs and funeral elegies. In addition to a large collection of Davies’s poems, it has, according to Robert Krueger, “the only extant copy” of Rudyerd’s epigrams, which “the compiler may have received […] directly from the author, who was a member of the Inner Temple.”46 The authors include the epigrammatists Thomas Bastard, John Owen, Henry Parrot, Sir John Harington, Thomas Freeman, and John Heywood as well as such other poets as Jonson, Donne, Hoskins, Francis Davison, John Taylor, John Ford, Overbury, Samuel Rowlands, John Fletcher, Thomas Goodwin, Charles Ryves, John Williams, Nathaniel Field, and William Seager. It includes work in a subgenre attractive to politically

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts 227 engaged urban professionals, the verse libel (of which there are six).47 The collection has also many songs, a form of which literary connoisseurs were fond.48 It contains three poems relating to the 1595 marriage of Lady Elizabeth Vere, the daughter of the Earl of Oxford, to the Earl of Derby.49 It registers the impact of various political topics and scandals, including the Parliament/Crown conflict over the proposal to unite the kingdoms of England and Scotland (to which John Hoskins and his colleagues responded with the satiric poem, “The Parliament Fart”), the marriage of Sir Robert Ker to the divorced Frances Howard (the Countess of Essex) and the subsequent murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, the late Jacobean negotiations for the Spanish match for Prince Charles, and the political ambitions of the Duke of Buckingham. Mixing verse circulating in manuscript and print in London with poems from academic sources, the manuscript includes such university poets as Richard Corbett, William Strode, and Benjamin Stone. In effect, this very large poetry collection reflects the political and recreational interests of an intellectual elite functioning in the late Elizabethan and Jacobean period. The third collection, National Art Library MS Dyce 44, has been identified as largely the work of Henry Brockman, who was at Middle Temple between 1592 and 1594 and whose copying of poems from that environment ended in 1615.50 It includes early copies of seven Donne poems along with pieces by such other Inns poets as Davies, Campion, and Hoskins, in addition to its important collection of Henry Constable’s sonnets and a variety of other pieces, including six libels on the Somerset-Howard marriage scandal.51 With regard to the last, it is noteworthy that Overbury, whose murder precipitated the fall of the Earl of Somerset and his wife, was a member of the Middle Temple before his period of service with Somerset.52 Early seventeenth-century poetry manuscripts associated with the Inns environment include BL MS Harley 3910, which has been described by Peter Beal as “an octavo verse miscellany, in several largely italic hands … [p]robably compiled by university or inns of court men” in the 1620s and 1630s.53 Its poems are bound as single sheets separately attached to a modern binding. Mary Hobbs, who connects several Inns manuscripts by way of their shared elegies for members of the Herbert family (Earls of Pembroke), observes that Harley 3910 has “poems … chiefly by contemporaries of Francis Beaumont the dramatist and his brother, Sir John, as well as by the Herbert brothers” (William and Philip).54 Some of the items in the collection have particular relevance to the Inns and Inns men. Early in the manuscript, there is an apparently unique copy of an elegy written “On the receit of a lettre signifieng the death of the never enough admyred Dr. Fenton” (f. 5). This appears to refer to Roger Fenton, who was educated at Cambridge, where he received both B.A. and M.A. degrees, then preached at Gray’s Inn from 1598, whose benchers covered the

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cost of his Bachelor of Divinity degree (1602), after which he was formally admitted in 1606 as preacher at the Inn. From 1600 he served as Sir Thomas Egerton’s chaplain during the period in which John Donne was the Lord Keeper’s secretary. Among other works, including a tract against usury, he published An Answere to W. Alabaster, his Motives (1599; STC 10799) and dedicated it to his Gray’s Inn colleagues. Starting in his years at Cambridge, he had long-term friendships with Lancelot Andrewes and Nicholas Felton. He died in 1616.55 Fenton, therefore, was a clergyman with strong connections to both the Inns of Court and to the culture’s center of political power. It is no surprise, then, that an elegy for him should appear early in a manuscript from this environment. Following the elegy for Fenton in Harley 3910 is an apparently unique copy of a fifty-eight-line religious lyric by William Austin, beginning “Thou greatest goodest God whose highest hand” (ff. 6–7).56 Austin was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in 1604 and was called to the bar in 1611. He wrote and circulated a number of religious poems among friends during his lifetime, but they were not printed until 1635, the year after his death.57 Austin is probably the author of another poem in this manuscript, the elegy for Queen Anne (who died in 1618) (“No further shalt thou choak mee grief ympersoned” [ff. 42v-43]).58 Among several political pieces in Harley 3910 is an “Epitaph upon Essex,” a short poem about the Earl of Essex that was printed at the end of Robert Pricket’s Honors Fame in Triumph Riding. Or, The Life and Death of the Late Honorable Earle of Essex (1604).59 Its author, Charles Best, became a member of the Middle Temple in 1592, taking part in its 1597–98 revels, Le Prince d’Amour, with a “Tuftaffata Oration.” He contributed two poems to the 1602 edition of Francis Davison’s A Poetical Rapsodie and ten others to the second (1611) edition. Sir John Davies wrote an epigram to him, published in The Scourge of Folly (1610).60 Davies himself, a Middle Temple author, is represented in Harley 3910 by his satiric epigram written against the Earl of Nottingham, “The great archpapist learned Curio” (f. 11), and by a piece from “An Entertainment at Harefield” (ff. 38v-39). Other Inns authors and friends of Inns authors represented in the manuscript include Donne, Bacon, Hoskins, Holland, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Jonson, Rudyerd, William Browne of Tavistock, and William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. The manuscript has a series of thirteen elegies for Thomas Murray, who died in 1623: he was the Provost at Eton, former tutor of Charles I, and secretary to Prince Henry,61 in whose court he was involved, along with many other Inns men. Hobbs connects two related manuscripts with Harley 3910, BL MSS Add. 25303 and 21433, which share twenty-two poems with it. She also states that 21433 shares over 104 (actually 108) poems with 25303 in identical texts, but that, unlike its source, it seems to have been transcribed in a short period of time.62 The major difference between the two

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts 229 collections, apart from the fifty-eight poems in 25303 that are not in 21433, is that in 21433 the epitaphs and elegies of the other manuscript are moved to a separate section at the end of the collection. BL MS Add. 25303 is a verse miscellany Henry Woudhuysen claims was “compiled for Thomas Darcy, Viscount Colchester … and may date from 1621 to 1626.”63 It was written in a hand that is also found in ff. 112v-20v of Harley 3910.64 It contains many poems written by men who were connected with the Inns of Court, with Parliament, and with the urban social networks of a political elite whose members sometimes met in venues such as the Mermaid and Mitre taverns. Connecting several manuscripts in what she calls “the legal tradition of textual descent,” Mary Hobbs notes that, among the poems shared by them are pieces by several lawyers: John Vaughan, Henry Blount, and Robert Ellice, who moved from Merton College, Oxford to the Inns of Court “where William Davenant and Thomas Carew are found with them in the circle of wits that surrounded Edward Hyde, later Earl of Clarendon, in the late 1620s.”65 Blount, Ellice, and Hyde all provided commendatory poems to the 1629 printing of William Davenant’s The Tragedy of Albovine, King of the Lombards.66 Add. MS 25303 has a poem and answer that involves John Hoskins and the wife of his (and John Donne’s) friend Christopher Brooke, the widowed Lady Jacob: “To the Lady Jacob” (“O love whose pow’r and might none ever yet withstood” [f. 70v]) and “Lady Jacobs’ answer” (“Your letter I receiv’d with flourishing quarters” [f. 71]).67 Written in the middle of the second decade of the seventeenth century, this exchange involves two Inns men at a stage beyond the one in which they were part of Inns literary culture. Though later printed, these poems first circulated in manuscript, Hoskins’s poem appearing in some fifteen manuscripts and printed books68 and Lady Jacob’s response in six other manuscripts and three printed volumes.69 BL MSS Add. 25303 and 21433, as well as Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.a.125.1 (f. 42v), have what appear to be the only surviving copies of Ellice’s love poem on a traditional theme, the neglected lover’s competition with his mistress’s mirror for her attention, “Religion bids mee pause or else ide paye.” One poem by Henry Blount seems to survive only in 25303 (f. 171), 21433 (f. 157), and in Ros. MS 1083/17: “They whoe againste loves Kingdom raile” (f. 156).70 BL MS Lansdowne 777 is described by Peter Beal as “[a] quarto composite volume of miscellaneous tracts, poems and other papers, in various hands” in which ff. 2–82 “comprise a separate collection of verse and some prose.”71 It starts with a section labeled “Poems by William Browne of the Inner Temple Gent &c 1650” (f. 1), which ends “Finis W Browne” on f. 62v. It is interesting that Browne is identified as an Inns member: he was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1612 and, in her ODNB biography, Michelle O’Callaghan calls him “the quasi-official poet for the Inner Temple from about 1613 to 1616.”72 There are six

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anonymous and apparently unique copies of poems in Lansdowne 777 not included in CELM. These include “On Mr. Francis Lee of the Temple gent.” (“Nature having seen the fates” [f. 56]),73 a piece “On a ropemaker hanged” (“Here lies a man much wrong’d in his hopes” [f. 59v]), another comic epitaph, “Here lies kind Tom thrust out of door” (f. 59v), and “An epitaph on Mistris. El. Y.” (“Underneath this stone there lies” [f. 60]). As the manuscript continues, there are pieces by Sir Walter Ralegh, Thomas Carew, William Strode, Henry Rainolds, Ben Stone, Chidiock Tichborne, William Basse, Sir Henry Wotton, Sir Robert Ayton, Sir John Davies, Walton Poole, Richard Corbett, Henry King, Owen Felltham, George Herbert, Sir Edward Dyer, and John West: many of these poems appear in Christ Church, Oxford collections and most had wide manuscript distribution. One of the unusual pieces is a poem by Richard Senhouse, “A Melancholy fancy” (“Canst lead me to a plot of ground” [f. 68]). According to Peter McCullough’s ODNB biography, Senhouse was at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1592, graduating with a B.A. in 1595, after which he was elected fellow of St John’s and received an M.A. in 1598. He was ordained in 1604, received a Bachelor of Divinity in 1606, enjoyed royal patronage, and served as chaplain to the Earl of Bedford, later being appointed chaplain to Prince Charles. He was made dean of Gloucester in 1621. He received a Doctor of Divinity in 1622 and was made bishop of Carlisle in 1624, subsequently preaching Charles I’s coronation sermon. Four of his court sermons reached print in 1627.74 Senhouse’s poem may seem an alien presence in the manuscript, but Inns men closely followed doings at both the university and the royal court. Mark Bland associates Hunt. MS HM 198.2 with the Inner Temple in the second decade of the seventeenth century, although it has a lot of verse from the 1620s and later, including, it would seem, many poems by Dudley, Third Baron North that were later revised and gathered in his 1645 publication, The Forest of Varieties.75 Also there are poems by William Strode and Robert Herrick, as well as a run of sonnets by the Catholic convert Sir Toby Matthew written while he was abroad. It has many pieces by Inns authors from the 1590s through the first decade and a half of the seventeenth century: John Donne (represented by fifty-nine poems), Nicholas Hare, John Hoskins, Francis Beaumont, Sir John Roe, Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, and Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury. It appears to be one of the earliest manuscripts to contain a large body of Donne’s verse. Most collections with his poems were copied in the 1620s and 1630s.76 Before recording a long run of poems by Donne on ff. 12–34, this manuscript collection mixes some of that author’s poems with the work of other writers whose verse circulated in the same environment: these include Jonson, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, Sir John Roe, and Francis Beaumont.

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts 231 The Farmer-Chetham manuscript (Chetham’s Library, Manchester MS Mun. A.4.15) is an interesting example of a document that was begun in an Inns-of-Court environment, where the scribes had access to texts produced and consumed in the same bibliogeographical location, and then moved, as Joel Swann has pointed out, to a provincial milieu, where poems by the yeoman poet Henry Gurney were added.77 It begins with prose letters and documents connected with politically prominent figures from the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods (for example, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Ralegh, and Sir Francis Bacon) and then records a series of poems by prominent Inns poets: it has a unique copy of Davies “Gulling Sonnets,” fifteen epigrams by Rudyerd, four poems by Hoskins and a small number of pieces by Harington, Donne, Christopher Brooke, William Lewis (of Oriel College, Oxford), Henry Parrot, Campion, the Earl of Oxford, Sidney, the Earl of Essex, and Jonson. Spanning the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods, this collection of texts from both Inns, courtly, and provincial locations seems to contain whatever came to hand—both older texts, letters related to prominent political figures, and poems in circulation in various environments. Some poetic compilations with roots in the social world of the Inns of Court and its extension into London tavern culture and patronage circles were transcribed by professional scribes who functioned in the neighborhood.78 Though it was produced in the 1630s, Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 31 is a professionally copied manuscript that preserves verse from the late 1590s through 1610 by a group of poets connected, as Michelle O’Callaghan points out, to the “scribal network constellated around [Lucy Harington Russell] Countess [of Bedford]”: it is a “nostalgic collection that captures a coterie culture that is now past.”79 Transcribed by the so-called “Feathery Scribe,”80 this manuscript has a group of poems by writers who were part of a London social network. Mark Bland says that “literary and social connections […] can be traced between the Inner and Middle Temples as well as the secretariats (particularly that of Essex) during the late 1590s” and that “this group subsequently fused as the literary coterie associated with the Countesses of Rutland and Bedford in the first decade of the seventeenth century. In turn, it is these connections which have left their trace across the verse miscellanies from the period, in which the poems of Jonson, Donne, Beaumont, Edward Herbert, Overbury, Pembroke, Sir John Roe, Rudyerd, and Wotton frequently appear.”81 This group is quite visible in this manuscript: in addition to poems by Donne and Jonson (who were friends), there are poems by Roe, Wotton, Sir Edward Herbert, Francis Beaumont, and Rudyerd. The pieces by the Earl of Pembroke that are included are related to those by Rudyerd and the pieces by Harington, Ralegh, and Campion are not surprising holdovers from an earlier period.

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Folger MS V.a.245 is identified by Peter Beal as a 1630s collection begun at Oxford and then continued at the Inns of Court. It has many poems by Oxford authors such as Richard Corbett, William Strode, Ben Stone, Henry King, William Lewis, and George Morley, but also pieces by poets writing in an Inns environment such as John Donne, Hugh Holland, Sir Thomas Roe, Carew, William Browne of Tavistock, Davies, the Earl of Pembroke, Rudyerd, Hoskins, and Jonson. Henry King, especially after his becoming an honorary member of Lincoln’s Inn in 1619, functioned in the extended Inns environment and, as Mary Hobbs points out in her edition of the Stoughton Manuscript, “[s]some copies of his early poems occur outside his own collections only in verse miscellanies of legal provenance.”82 Bod. MS Douce 280 is a collection of verse assembled by John Ramsay, who went from Cambridge to The Middle Temple in 1606; it is largely an anthology of pieces found in songbooks printed between 1597 and 1609.83 It also records a longer poem printed in 1594, “The Fisherman’s Tale” by Francis Sabie. Ramsay was responsive to the influence of Edmund Spenser’s verse and his own compositions included in the manuscript are Spenserian. While the manuscript lacks poems by other Inns writers, it does demonstrate the literary interests of some Inns residents, particularly in the printed songbooks of the period. BL MS Add. 33998 was written, as Beal notes, for the professional lawyer Chaloner Chute by a legal scribe who also did work transcribing plays. Chute, who entered the Middle Temple in 1613 and was called to the bar in 1623,84 put together the kind of collection that an educated and political aware gentleman liked to have, incorporating not only recreational pieces but also material relevant to contemporary politics.85 It includes verse by a number of Oxford poets that had wide distribution along with verse relevant to its urban environment. Inns authors represented in the anthology include Francis Beaumont, John Grange, and Henry Blount. Interestingly, one of Blount’s poems, “Those that against Loves kingdom rayle,” is found elsewhere only in the two related Inns manuscripts, BL MSS Add. 25303 and 21433. Another Inns author in this collection is James Shirley, represented by fifteen poems, the largest number in any manuscript outside the main manuscript collection of his verse, Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 88. Shirley was at Gray’s Inn from the early 1620s, composing his Inns-of-Court masque The Triumph of Peace in 1634, then moving into a career as a playwright. Chute’s collection contains politically topical poems on Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy of Ireland (ff. 38v-40), on Sir Walter Ralegh’s death in 1618 (f. 96v), on the assassination of Thomas Scott (ff. 90–96v), the political pamphleteer who opposed the Spanish Match, on the Duke of Buckingham’s death in 1628 (ff. 41–42), and on the condemned assassin of Buckingham, John Felton (ff. 42v-43v). One relatively rare political poem dealing with the monopolists targeted in the 1621

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts 233 Parliament, “The Cryer,” deals with Sir Giles Momperson, Sir Francis Michaell, Sir Robert Floud, and Sir Francis Bacon, a text that appears in a number of other manuscripts, but here, (uniquely) their names were written in the margin, an indication of Chute’s closeness, while still a very young man, to the politically elite social networks that would have had this information.86 Like John Ramsay, Chaloner Chute seems to have adopted a connoisseur’s attitude toward manuscript compilation. Other manuscripts with possible Inns-of-Court connections include BL MS Add. 62135, which may have been compiled around 1630 by Sir Francis Wyatt, who was at Gray’s Inn in 1604;87 Corpus Christi, Oxford MS 327, which has poems by Donne, John Hoskins and his wife, Francis Beaumont, and Sir John Harington; BL MS Sloane 1446, which includes many Inns authors along with poems from other environments;88 and Bod. MS Don. c.54, compiled by Richard Roberts, who, Michelle O’Callaghan has pointed out, was employed in the secretariat of Ludovic Stuart, Duke of Lennox, and had access to texts circulating both at court and in London.89 Especially as we move beyond the 1620s, it is hard to distinguish manuscripts confined to the Inns environment, since there are in wide circulation numerous poems and groups of poems by late Elizabethan and early Stuart writers (the latter sometimes constituting what Harold Love has called “rolling archetypes”)90—pieces from the University, from London, from the Court, from the provinces that are often gathered together in particular whole or composite manuscripts.

Inns Poets Several authors who wrote verse while in residence at the Inns of Court and its environs are well known in literary history: John Donne, Francis Beaumont, Thomas Campion, and Sir John Davies, for example. Others have only gotten minor notice or have been largely ignored—at least by those who are not specialists in early modern English literature. I would like to call attention to a few of these. The first is John Hoskins, who had high visibility in several London cultural and political circles. John Aubrey’s brief biography of Hoskins emphasizes his social connections and activities, especially after he came to London as a married man with a child and enrolled in The Middle Temple. Aubrey says: “His great Witt quickly made him be taken notice of. Ben: Johnson called him father” because, in Jonson’s words, “he polished me” as he supposedly later did Sir Walter Ralegh’s writing when that author was working on his History of the World in the Tower of London. Aubrey puts Hoskins in the midst of a fashionable London social world: “… his acquaintance were all the Witts then about the Towne; e.g. Sir Walter Raleigh … John Donne, D.D.; Sir Benjamin Ruddyer … Sir Henry Wotton, Provost of Eaton College; cum multis alijs.”91 Some of them were Inns-of-Court men, others connected to the Inns through their

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friendships and the social networks of which they were part. Some of the verse Hoskins wrote can be found in various manuscript documents,92 but Aubrey says that much was lost: “He had a booke of Poems, neatly written (by one of his Clarkes) bigger than Dr Donne’s Poemes, which his sonn Benet lent to he knowes not who, about 1653, and could never heare of it since.”93 This casualty, of course, brings to mind the situation in which John Donne found himself just before he took orders and was contemplating publishing his own poems: he had to ask Sir Henry Goodyer to send back to him a “book” of his verse that he had lent to him.94 Many of Donne’s poems in his Inns-of-Court years and into the reign of James, no doubt, circulated in a restricted social network and, for a variety of reasons, were not collected in commonplace books, miscellanies, or poetical anthologies. His close friend George Garrard, who lived in close proximity to him for a while after 1607, explains that “I … never had Patience in all my life to transcribe Poems, except they were very transcendent, such as Dean Donn writt in his younger days.”95 This suggests that a lot of gentlemen never bothered to keep copies or collect some of the poems they wrote or that came into their possession—though recent scholarship has suggested that Garrard regularly sent poems and other literary works to his correspondents and he was probably the transcriber of the (Group I) “Dowden” manuscript of Donne’s pre-1614 verse.96 Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, who later was a politically prominent M.P. in a series of parliaments in which he made many speeches that reached print, was active during his Inns-of-Court years and shortly after as a poet and wit. One if the authors of Le Prince d’Amour (1597–98), and of pieces written as part of a poetic exchange with William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, he was part of a social network radiating beyond the Inns. Mary Ellen Lamb suggests that the poetic exchanges between Pembroke and Rudyerd took place in the first decade of the seventeenth century in an environment of the Inns and the taverns in which Inns men and others regularly met, including, she argues, Shakespeare, whose Sonnet 116 she connects with Pembroke’s “If her disdaine least change in you can move” and Rudyerd’s answer poem, “Tis love breeds love in me, and could disdaine.”97 John Grange was a Lincoln’s Inn poet whose verse appears in the company of other Inns writers.98 His most transcribed poem, an answer to Richard Corbett’s popular poem, “To the ladies of the new dress,” beginning “Black cypress veils are shrowds of night,” is found in some twenty-two manuscripts, including several with Inns-of-Court connections.99 Several of his poems were included (without attribution) in John Donne, Jr.’s 1660 edition of Poems, Written by the Right Honorable William Earl of Pembroke … [and] Sir Benjamin Ruddier.100 The proximity of poems by other Inns writers of the first part of the seventeenth-century in the manuscript remains of the period, rather than the deceitfulness or editorial sloppiness of John Donne’s son, may

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts 235 account for the inclusion of such verse in the printed volume. In this book, in addition to poems by or probably by Grange, there are poems by Nicholas Hare, Sir Henry Wotton, Henry King, and others connected to the Inns environment.101 John Vaughan, who went from Christ Church, Oxford to the Inner Temple in 1621, was according to his son, “addicted to poetry, mathematics and more alluring studies at first” and became more serious about his career after he began his friendship with John Selden (whose social circle included John Donne, Edward Herbert, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Samuel Daniel).102 Clarendon says that, while at the Inner Temple, Vaughan “indulged more to the politer learning” and was “a man of great parts … very well adorned by arts and books.” He was part of a social circle that included Ben Jonson, Sir Kenelm Digby and, perhaps, Thomas Hobbes.103 His most popular poem, “Upon a gentlewoman inviting her old friend to her wedding” (“Why fair vow-breaker, hath thy sin thought fit”) appears in BL MSS Add. 25303, 21433, as well as in fourteen other manuscripts and two printed books. James Cobbes, who was at Gray’s Inn in the early 1620s, wrote both a tragedy and a comedy while there, as well as composing a sizeable collection of English verse. Though off the literary-historical radar, Cobbes is another poet who found the Inns environment conducive to literary production. Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 166 contains many of his poems, later annotated and corrected by his grandson. These pieces are in a variety of forms and topics, with their authorship masked under the noms de plume “Alphonso Mervall” and “Tettix.”104 The Welsh poet Sir Thomas Salusbury wrote several pieces associated with his brief stay at the Inner Temple in the early 1630s.105 He wrote, for example, “An Elege upon the death of Mr. Becke gen[tleman] of the Inner Temple written to his Sister now great with Child” (“In whome noe wanton Subjects of the tyme”), numbering each of the forty-six lines and noting after subscribing his name, “This coppie was altered from the 24 verse, at the gent[leman’s] request for whom they were made, vide infra” (NLW MS 5390D, pp. 263–64). He also wrote “An Elegie meant upon the death of Ben: Jonson” (“Shall I alone spare paper? in an age” [pp. 289–90]) and, among other poems, one referring to the business he conducted between the Inns of Court and Westminster, “An Expostulation with my Muse and a Defiance to Poetry” (“And wilt thou leave mee soe my churlish muse?” (NLW MA 5390A [pp. 293–95]). The last poem bemoans the loss of his poetic inspiration in the midst of legal business. Salusbury served in the Short Parliament (1640) and was a strong royalist, fighting, for example, in the battle of Edgehill. The large (543-page) folio manuscript in which these poems are found is, in Beal’s description, a “composite volume of verse, prose and dramatic works, in various hands, written over a period from both ends … [c]ompiled by members of the Salusbury family of Llwenni, Denbighshrie, including

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works by Sir Thomas Salusbury, second Baronet (1612–43), poet and politician.”106 Salusbury published one poem, The History of Joseph (1636), and was the author three closet dramas, a five-act play, two incomplete plays and occasional masques, including the Chirk Castle entertainment of 1634.107 The presence in the surviving manuscripts from the early modern period of these and of other authors writing in the environment of the Inns of Court and their surroundings, including writers who are not identified in those documents, invites us to think of the phenomenon of socioliterary networking, a subject that is not necessarily in the forefront of most literary histories. Context matters when it comes to our understanding of individual poets of that time.

The Cultural Milieu of the Inns Sir Richard Baker’s description of the behavior of the young John Donne at Lincoln’s Inn in the 1590s alludes to his activities apart from his legal training and personal program of reading and intellectual exploration: “leaving Oxford,[he] lived at the Innes of Court, not dissolute, but very neat, a great visiter of Ladies, a great frequenter of Playes, a great writer of conceited Verses.”108 Being “very neat” rather than “dissolute” means being clean in his self-presentation, not a sloppy drunken libertine.109 Being a “visiter of Ladies” doesn’t necessarily mean womanizing, but rather having polite social contact with socially prominent women. Frequenting plays is an activity in which most of his peers engaged110 and many of those dramas, such as Shakespeare’s romantic comedies, including Twelfth Night, which was performed at The Middle Temple in 1601/2, had indulged the fantasy of upward social mobility. Writing “conceited Verses” was also something in which his fellows engaged. Ben Jonson’s observation that Donne wrote “all his best pieces err he was 25 years old” (that is by the end of 1597, when the poet left Lincoln’s Inn to take part in the Cadiz expedition) points to the lyrics, love elegies, and satires he composed while a student at Lincoln’s Inn.111 The first satire’s portrayal of a law student who escapes the cramped quarters in which he lives and studies to go out on the town in the bad company of a deluded fool looks like a self-critical account of some of the poet’s extra-curricular engagement with the larger cultural milieu of London. The love elegies, many of which convert the Rome of their classical models into the contemporary urban environment in which Donne functioned, both assert the innovative poetic skills of their author and allude fictionally to a world he shared with his fellows. If the majority of the residents of the Inns of Court were there not for the serious professional study of law, but rather for liberal education, social networking and access to the cultural and recreational advantages of London, we have to ask what this means for definitions of the Inns as

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts 237 a cultural environment. Jessica Winston tries to bridge the gap between legal study and the social advancement all Inns men pursued by suggesting that some of their literary activities (play and masque writing, for example) were part of a larger effort of accumulating cultural capital and asserting the right to express political advice and criticism.112 Of course, many lawyers trained at the Inns went on to successful legal careers and government service, their positions and actions noted in the verse written in the period. A prime example is Sir John Davies. But lesser figures, such as Sir Nicholas Hyde also became socially and politically prominent: he was a member of the Middle Temple in the 1590s, was called to the bar in 1598, served in several parliaments, became Recorder of Bristol, was a member of the Virginia Company (along with others from the Middle Temple), became a bencher at Middle Temple in 1617, advised Sir Lionel Cranfield during his impeachment trial, was chosen by the Duke of Buckingham to write responses to his own impeachment, and through Buckingham got a knighthood and was made chief justice of the King’s bench in 1627. His political enemy Sir Simonds D’Ewes criticized him as a social parvenu and a contemporary libel called him an “upstart.”113

Inns Verse and the Political World Poems preserved in the London manuscript collections were attuned to contemporary Jacobean and early Caroline political events. These include the following: the debate in the 1604–10 Parliament over the union of the kingdoms of Scotland and England (the immediate occasion of the popular and evolving poem known as “The Parliament Fart”);114 the jailing of some of the more outspoken members of the 1614 (“Addled’) Parliament; the Somerset-Howard marriage scandal and the murder of Overbury; the negotiations for a Spanish Match for Prince Charles and their collapse in 1623; the impeachments of Sir Giles Mompesson (1621), Sir Francis Bacon (1621), and Sir Lionel Cranfield (1624); and the Duke of Buckingham’s disastrous Isle of Rhé expedition and his 1628 assassination.115 Poems about all these subjects were transcribed not only in Inns-of-Court and other London collections but also in university verse anthologies. For example, an apparently unique copy of a poem about Mompesson, who was fictionalized as Sir Giles Overreach in Philip Massinger’s A New Way to Pay Old Debts, “Upon Mompesson overrunning the Parliament,” appears in BL MS Harley 3910 (f. 60), (dubiously) attributed to Sir Robert Cotton.116 Bod. MS Malone 23, a collection of mostly topical political verse running from the early Jacobean through the early Caroline period, has a poem about “Lionel Earl of Middlesex Lo[rd] Treasurer his fall” (“The base on which man’s greatness firmest stands” [p. 27]):117 Cranfield’s impeachment for corruption was occasioned by his opposition to Prince Charles’s and the Duke of Buckingham’s campaign for a war with Spain in the wake of the

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Spanish Match debacle. The fall of Bacon, whose professional roots were at Gray’s Inn, elicited a number of poems.118 Most of these poems would have been regarded as libels, a form that was legally proscribed. Political libels, as David Colclough has argued, were disempowered individuals’ means of offering counsel and criticism: collecting such verse, along with other sharp epigrammatic and political pieces, in personal anthologies was an act of social and political activism by those who took seriously their roles as citizens and political agents.119 Such activity was, of course, legally and politically dangerous. The collection of poems assembled in London by Richard Roberts (Bod. MS Don. c.54), which was compiled between 1602 and the mid-1620s, is especially attuned to events in the metropolitan center: in addition to poems and letters in their native language from his Welsh contacts, it includes many libels about Sir Robert Cecil, Sir Edward Coke, and the Somerset-Howard marriage scandal, two poems attacking the enemies of the Earl of Essex, as well as poems about the fall of Sir Lionel Cranfield—the last figure associated with the Mitre Tavern group.120 It also has, however, poems about university happenings: an anonymous “libel against Oxford upon their first entertainment of the King” [1605] (f. 25); Corbett’s poem about King James’s 1615 visit to Cambridge (f. 23v) and two other poems about G. Ruggle’s play acted before the king, Ignoramus, which satirized lawyers, followed by two answer poems (ff. 26v–27v); and Corbett’s satiric piece on Daniel Price’s anniversary sermon on the death of Prince Henry (f. 29) (which had been published in 1614). Roberts’s collection illustrates some of the university/metropolis connections and networks found also in a number of other contemporary manuscripts. Manuscripts such as Folger MS V.a.262, Harv. MS English 686,121 like a number of other contemporary collections illustrate this process. Daniel Leare, cousin of the popular Christ Church poet William Strode, collected Strode’s and other Christ Church poets’ verse while at the university and then also relocated to The Middle Temple in 1633.122 The Christ Church poet Henry King brought much university verse with him when he moved to London in the late 1610s, where he became an honorary member of Lincoln’s Inn and a royal chaplain-in-ordinary. Although King left Oxford in 1616 when he married, he maintained connections there and preached some sermons there.123 Most of the manuscripts connected with the King family that Mary Hobbs has studied mix poems originating both at the university and in London.124 Inns-of-Court and London socioliterary networks connected with others beyond the society’s urban center.

Conclusion The manuscripts containing verse written by Inns authors or those compiled by or for Inns residents are a socioliterary mixed bag. Some

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts 239 compilations clearly reflect the games of literary competition and exchange that took place in the extended Inns environment. Others reproduce substantial collections of particular authors, such as John Donne, Sir John Davies or John Hoskins by friends with access to their verse. Others represent the collecting efforts of individuals moving from university to Inns environments (and also to other locations). Others are the product of the transcription activities of more than one individual (either in a particular family or in a social network). The poetry collected had various social, political, and esthetic contexts. First, manuscript compilations of verse were part of a way of life of educated and relatively prosperous individuals whose self-identification within groups of their peers was affirmed or reaffirmed by the texts they shared. Second, they were a record of shared interests in current events, scandals, and political tensions and the individuals involved in them: poetry could function as both news and political criticism or advocacy. Third, the verse collected could be a badge of one’s intellectual and literary sophistication, and of what Lawrence Manley has called “urban eloquence”:125 in an age in which literary discourse was being separated from ordinary communication and placed in a sphere of its own, literary cognoscenti could claim a special cultural prestige that, in some cases, elevated them above their aesthetically less-sensitive peers and social inferiors. The professional lawyer Chaloner Chute may have hired a scribe to do a large poetry collection (BL MS Add. 33998) for that reason. Whatever the motives for writing or collecting poetry in the environment of the Inns of Court, despite the fact that we have only an imperfect record of the different kinds of literary transactions that took place there, we can appreciate the cultural richness of this changing bibliogeographical location in which poetic texts had both a social life and impact.

Notes 1 In the 1616 Folio edition of The Workes of Benjamin Jonson, sig. G2, he uses this language in dedicating his comical satire, Everyman in his Humour, to the Inns of Court. 2 For a discussion of the cultural and literary environment of the Inns, see Wilfred Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts (London: Longman, 1972) and The Rise of the Barristers: A Social History of the English Bar 1590–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 184–208; Philip Finkelpearl, John Marston of the Middle Temple: An Elizabethan Dramatist in His Social Setting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), 3–80; Arthur F. Marotti, John Donne, Coterie Poet (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 25–95; Jane Elisabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring, and Sarah Knight (eds.), The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2011); and Alan H. Nelson and John R. Elliott, Jr. (eds.), Records of Early English Drama: Inns of Court, vol. 1 Introduction, The Records (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), xiii–xlvii.

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3

4

5

6 7

8 9 10

Multiple Manuscripts William Scott composed his treatise on poetics, The Model of Poesy, while he was at the Inner Temple in the late 1590s (William Scott, The Model of Poesy, ed. Gavin Alexander [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013], xx–xxi). R. C. Bald, John Donne: A Life (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 169, says that, following Prince Henry’s sudden death in 1612, “Donne’s circle made a concerted effort to celebrate the prince’s memory” and notes that the group of poets represented in the third edition of memorial volume for Prince Henry, Lacrymae Lachrymarum (1613), include, in addition to Donne, Joseph Hall, George Garrard, Hugh Holland, Sir William Cornwallis, Sir Edward Herbert, Sir Henry Goodyer and Henry Burton. See Michelle O’Callaghan, The English Wits: Literature and Sociability in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); David Colclough, Freedom of Speech in Early Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); I. A. Shapiro, “The ‘Mermaid Club,” RES 45 (1950): 6–17; Mark Bland, “Francis Beaumont’s Verse Letters to Ben Jonson and ‘The Mermaid Club,’” English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700 12 (Scribes and Transmission in English Manuscripts 1400–1700) (2005): 139–79; and Daniel Starza Smith, John Donne & the Conway Papers: Patronage & Manuscript Circulation in the Early Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 185–92 and passim. For discussions of later social groups of clubs, see Timothy Raylor, Cavaliers, Clubs, and Literary Culture: Sir John Mennes, James Smith, and the Order of the Fancy (Newark: University of Delaware Press and London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1994) and Nicholas McDowell, Poetry and Allegiance in the English Civil Wars: Marvell and the Cause of Wit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Harold Love, Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 9 and passim; see also Margaret Crum, “Notes on the Physical Characteristics of Some Manuscripts of the Poems of Donne and of Henry King,” The Library 16 (1961): 121–32, who argues that the verse of both Donne and King circulated in small units. “The Work in Transmission and Its Recovery,” Shakespeare Studies 32 (2004): 75. For a discussion of social networks, see Jason Scott-Warren, “Reconstructing manuscript networks: the textual transactions of Sir Stephen Powle,” in Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, ed. Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000), 18–27. Jessica Winston, Lawyers at Play: Literature, Law, and Politics at the Early Modern Inns of Court, 1558–1581 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). I use the following abbreviations for the four Inns: GI (Gray’s Inn), LI (Lincoln’s Inn), MT (Middle Temple), and IT (Inner Temple). I also list the year of admission of each individual. Among the forty-four individuals contributing poems to the Coryat editions are William Austen, Christopher Brooke, Campion, Corbett, John Davies of Hereford, Michael Drayton, Sir Henry Goodyer, Hugh Holland, Hoskins, Inigo Jones, Lionel Cranfield, Richard Martin, Sir Henry Neville, John Owen, Sir Edward Phelips, Sir Robert Phelips, Nicholas Smith, and Sir John Strangeways. See O’Callaghan, The English Wits, 102–27, for a discussion of “Coryat’s Crudities (1611) and the sociability of print.”

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts 241 11 See the discussion of this in O’Callaghan, The English Wits, 3. 12 See the lists of members of the overlapping dining clubs with which Donne was involved in Starza Smith, John Donne & the Conway Papers, 188. 13 In particular, Hoskins’s poem “Absence” and Bacon’s “The world’s a bubble” were transcribed in a very large number of manuscript collections. A collection such as BL MS Stowe 962 illustrates how Donne’s poems were mixed with those of others in his social network. For a discussion of this manuscript and of the subject of the misattribution of poems to Donne, see Lara M. Crowley, “Attribution and Anonymity: Donne, Ralegh, and Fletcher in British Library, Stowe MS 962,” in Joshua Eckhardt and Daniel Starza Smith (eds.), Manuscript Miscellanies in Early Modern England (Farnham, U.K. and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014), 133–49. 14 Ayton, a Scottish courtly servant, was active in London society: see Harriet Harvey Wood’s biography of him in ODNB: http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/article/958 (accessed 18 October 2015). 15 Sylvester, the translator of DuBartas, enjoyed the patronage of the Earl of Essex. See Susan Snyder’s ODNB biography of him: http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/26873?docPos=1 (accessed 17 October 2015). 16 See the table of contents of the two Dalhousie manuscripts in Ernest W. Sullivan, II (ed.) The First and Second Dalhousie Manuscripts; Poems and Prose by John Donne and Others, A Facsimile Edition (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1988), ix–x. 17 See John Donne, The Elegies and The Songs and Sonnets, ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), lxv–lxvii. 18 In the early Jacobean period, this witty courtier and Inns-of-Court man, whose epigrams circulated widely in manuscript before their publication, continued his courtly career under both King James I and Prince Henry. See Jason Scott-Warren’s ODBN biography of him: http://www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/12326/?back=,12327 (accessed 15 October 2015). See also Peter Beal’s inventory of manuscript copies of Harington’s poems in CELM http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/authors/haringtonsirjohn.html (accessed 17 October 2015). 19 In the 1669 edition of Donne, as in the Norton manuscript (Harv. MS Eng. 966.3, f. 9), this poem is identified as the sixth satire, following the set of the five satires by Donne. Roe’s poem appears in the following manuscripts: Yale Osb. MS b.114, p. 51; BL MSS Lansdowne 740, f. 68, and Stowe 962, f. 107; Bod. MS Eng. Poet. e. 14, f. 27; Harv. MSS Eng. 966.3, f. 9, 966.4, f. 119v, 966.5, f. 45v, 966.7, f. 78v; Hunt. MSS EL6893, f. 29 and HM 198.1, p. 74. 20 These poems are reproduced in The Poems of John Donne, ed. Herbert J. C. Grierson, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912), 1.401–5, 417, 428–29. The last poem is classified among the “Dubia.” See Mark Bland, “Stemmatics and Society in Early Modern England,” Studia Neophilologica 85 (2013): 1–19. 21 One possible exception to this is the manuscript associated with Donne’s friend, Rowland Woodward, (New York Public Library, Berg MS), which contains a text of only one lyric, “A Jeat Ring Sent.” Interestingly, this is the only Donne lyric to appear in BL MSS Add. 25303 (f. 165) and 21433 (f. 147v). Sullivan, The First and Second Dalhousie Manuscripts, 8, sees the Essex family manuscript collection as the progenitor of the “Group II” family of Donne manuscripts, which preserve Donne poems written before 1610. The person Sullivan, 5, identifies as the “most likely copyist or conduit from the court of James to the Dalhousie family” is Sir John

242

22 23 24

25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32

33 34

Multiple Manuscripts Ramsey, Viscount Haddington and Earl of Holderness (1580–1626) who was a member of the Inner Temple. See my discussion of this manuscript in chapter 3. William Skipwith of Cotes, Leicestershire (c. 1564–1610), the compiler of one of its earliest sections, was Donne’s fellow M.P. in the 1601 Parliament. See my discussion of these in Chapter 6. We know, for example, that booklets containing Donne’s five satires, along with his verse epistles to Christopher Brooke (“The Storme” and “The Calme”) circulated separately. One such group, found in truncated form in the “Conway Papers” is discussed by Smith, John Donne & the Conway Papers, 114. Another example is found in the recently discovered collection of Sir John Davies’s Epigrams found in the Herriard Collection in the Hampshire Record Office (MS 44M69/M4/4) which is discussed by Tom Lockwood, “Another New Manuscript of Sir John Davies’s Epigrams,” RES n.s. 67, no. 282 (2016): 875–96. Lockwood identifies the manuscript as belonging to Sir Richard Paulet, who was, along with Davies, a member of The Middle Temple, and whose hand was probably one of the those visible in the manuscript. Mary Hobbs, Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts (Aldershot, U.K. and Brookfield, VT: Scolar Press, 1992), 75. See my discussion of this manuscript in chapter 9. See, for example, Jason Scott-Warren, “Reconstructing Manuscript Networks: The Textual Transactions of Sir Stephen Powle,” in Shepard and Withington (eds.), Communities in Early Modern England, 18–37, at 19. See Emma Rhatigan, “‘The Sinful History of Mine Own Youth’: John Donne Preaches at Lincoln’s Inn,” in The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court, ed. Archer et al., 90–106. Yale Osb. MS b.114, p. 147. “The state and men’s affairs,” is found in several manuscripts and one edition of Donne’s poetry: BL MSS Harley 406, and Lansdowne 740, f. 102; Harv. MS Eng. 966,5, f. 100v; Hunt. MSS EL6893, f. 31, and HM 198.2. ff. 1b and 126b; Yale Osb. MS b.114, p. 144; Bod. MS Rawl. poet. 31, f. 24; and Poems by J. D. (1649), 197. For a study of Sir John Roe’s literary and social life in late Elizabethan and early Stuart London, see Alvaro Ribeiro, “Sir John Roe: Ben Jonson’s Friend,” RES 24. no. 94 (May 1973): 153–164. This edition will be published soon by The Renaissance English Text Society. Poems, Written by the Right Honorable William Earl of Pembroke … [and] Sir Benjamin Ruddier. Garth Bond, “‘Rare Poemes Aske Rare Friends’: Ben Jonson, Coterie Poet,” MP 107.3 (February 2010): 382, argues that Jonson, in circulating manuscript poetry, “engaged with a diverse group of contemporaries; playwrights and other associates from the theater; a network of London intellectuals that were centered around the Inns of Court and that included other poets like Donne and Rudyerd; and aristocratic patrons, especially those associated with the Sidney-Pembroke faction at court.” For Jonson’s social and literary connections to Inns writers, see O’Callaghan, English Wits, 35–59. See Smith, John Donne & the Conway Papers, Appendix II. See the discussion of the “coterie” of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke in Mary Ellen Lamb, “Literary Coteries of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke and William Herbert, Third Earl of Pembroke,” in Re-evaluating

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts 243

35 36 37 38

39

40

41

42

the Literary Coterie 1580–1830: From Sidney to Blackwood’s, ed. Will Bowers and Hanna Crummé (London: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2016), 22–29. See Epigrammes CXXI, CXXII, and CXXIII in Ben Jonson: The Complete Poems, ed. George Parfitt (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975), 81–82. See the discussion of this manuscript in Chapter 4. For a discussion of Sir Henry Goodyer and an edition of his poetry, see Daniel Starza Smith, “The Poems of Sir Henry Goodere,” John Donne Journal 31 (2012): 99–164. Davison’s comment, made around 1608, is reproduced in John Donne: The Critical Heritage, ed. A. J. Smith (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 64. Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 90–93. Hobbs also mentions Harley 4286, but of its sixteen poems, only the first, by Thomas Campion, seems to have been written by an Inns author: Campion was admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1586, took part in its revels in 1588, and wrote songs for the 1594 revels, Gesta Grayorum (see David Lindley’s ODNB biography of Campion: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4541 (accessed 25 April 2019). BL RP 2031 is a photographic copy of this manuscript. See Peter Beal https://celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/meisei-university-tokyo.html (accessed 13 May 2020) for a discussion of this manuscript. He associates it with the Inns of Court and dates it c.1614–25. There are other manuscripts one might examine as well. See H. R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts 1558–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) 165–68, who discusses, among other manuscripts, BL MS Harley 7392 because of its Inns connection and Bod. MSS Douce 280 (compiled by John Ramsay of Cambridge and the Middle Temple) and Rawl. Poet. 108. On the Douce manuscript, see Edward Doughtie, “John Ramsey’s Manuscript as a Personal and Family Document,” in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts: Papers of the Renaissance English Text Society, 1985–1991, ed. W. Speed Hill (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies in conjunction with the Renaissance English Text Society, 1993), 281–88. On BL Harley 7392 see Arthur F. Marotti, “Humphrey Coningsby and the Personal Anthologizing of Verse in Elizabethan England,” in New Ways of Thinking About Old Texts, IV: Papers of the Renaissance English Text Society 2002–2006, ed. Michael Denbo (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in conjunction with the Renaissance English Text Society, 2008), 71–102, and Jessica Edmonds (ed.), Elizabethan Poetry in Manuscript: An Edition of British Library MS Harley 7392(2) (Toronto: ITER Press for the Renaissance English Text Society, 2021). See the discussion of this manuscript in The Poems of Sir John Davies, ed. Robert Krueger (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 442, and in his two-part article, “Sir John Davies: Orchestra, Epigrams, Unpublished Poems,” RES n.s. 13, no. 49 (February 1962): 17–29 and n.s. 13, no. 50 (May 1962): 113–24. Though he functioned mainly in the setting of the court, Harington spent a short time at Lincoln’s Inn in the early 1580s: see Jason Scott-Warren’s ODNB biography of him: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/12326 (accessed 24 April 2019). For a discussion of the dissemination of Harington’s epigrams in manuscript culture, see Kilroy (ed.), The Epigrams of Sir John Harington, 80–85.

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43 Stone was at New College from 1605–9. See Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses … 1500–1714, vol. 4 (Oxford and London: Parker and Co., 1892), 1428. 44 “Why cruel death so soon did honest Owen catch,” (“Epitaphium upon the death of the butler of Christ Church in Oxford,” f. 23v); “I give not (though I love them well) the lilies” (f. 56v); “The horned ox our Athens once did bear” (f. 39). 45 See James Lee Sanderson, “An Edition of an Early Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collection of Poems (Rosenbach MS. 186),” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1960), lxiv. See Sanderson, lvi–cx, for a discussion of the manuscript and its contents. 46 Krueger (ed.), Davies, 444. 47 Sanderson, “An Edition,” lxxvi–vii. See the discussion of this manuscript in Joel Swann, “Copying Epigrams in Manuscript Miscellanies,” in Eckhardt and Smith (eds.), Manuscript Miscellanies in Early Modern England, 151–68. 48 Sanderson, “An Edition,” lxxxi-iv, lists some fourteen songs and eleven ballads. 49 See Sanderson, “An Edition,” 169–77. 50 See Claire Bryony Williams (now Loffman), “An Edition of National Art Library (Great Britain) MS. Dyce 44” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Sheffield, 2012) and “‘This and the rest Maisters we all may mende’: Reconstructing the Practices and Anxieties of a Manuscript Miscellany’s ReaderCompiler,” HLQ 80.2 (Summer 2017): 277–92. Her edition of Dyce 44 will be published by The Renaissance English Text Society. 51 See Williams, “An Edition,” points out that Dyce 44 also has poems by Sidney, Thomas Bastard, Harington, John Taylor, Ralegh, John Cooke, John Dowland, Joseph Hall, King James I, Thomas Nashe, George Wither, and Brockman himself. 52 See John Consodine’s ODNB biography of Overbury: http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/20966?docPos=1 (accessed 18 October 2015). 53 http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/british-library-harley-3000.html (accessed 18 February 2019). 54 Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 94. 55 This information is from Louis Knafla’s biography of Fenton in the ODNB: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001. 0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-9299?rskey=lRp6uD&result=3#odnb9780198614128-e-9299-div1-d1072960e761 (accessed 1 March 2019). 56 This has the heading “Nocturnalia horae xjmae Iulijo 1618.” 57 See Arnold Hunt’s biography of him in the ODNB: http://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e917?rskey=duYCik&result=4 (accessed 1 March 2019). A the urging of his friend James Howell, Austin’s verse was published in Devotionis Augustinianae flamma, or, Certaine devout, godly, and learned meditations written, by the excellently accomplist gentleman, William Austin, of Lincolnes-Inne (1635). His poems appear in the following other manuscripts: BL MS Add. 34752; Bod. MSS Don. e.17, Rawl. D. 301, Rawl. Poet. 61 and 160; Ros. MSS 239/27 and 1083/17; and Yale Osb. MSS b.65 and b.197. The first of these has nine of his poems prefaced by an introductory piece by the scribe Ralph Crane. 58 He is also probably the author of a piece translated from Anacreon’s verse, “Rosa” (“what supernal influence”) (ff. 44–45). 59 One of the things for which Essex is praised is his support “for this approv’d succession” (sig. C2v), a phrase that is underlined in the Huntington

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60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67

68 69

70 71 72 73

74 75

Library copy of the work. This aspect of Essex’s behavior, which would have endear’d him to James, is one of the reasons that this book was publishable in the early Jacobean period. See the ODNB biography of Best: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10. 1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-2288? rskey=c0YHZt&result=1 (accessed 21 February 2019). See his biography in the ODNB: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-19648? rskey=z244bH&result=3 (accessed 1 March 2019). Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 91–92. Woudhuysen, 157. Baird Whitlock, John Hoskins: Serjeant at Law (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982) identifies the compiler of this manuscript as Robert Bowyer, M.P., but this individual died in 1621 and ff. 79v-81 has an elegy for the Earl of Southampton, who died in 1624 and on f. 128v there is a poem about Sir Thomas Richardson, who died in February, 1634–35,“Here lies my Lord Richardson lock’d up in a chest.” CELM: http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/british-library-additional25000.html (accessed 2 May 2019). Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 45. There are twenty-seven poems by Carew in this manuscript. See sigs. A2v-3. The piece was also published in The New Academy of Complements, 231, as well as in five other Seventeenth century and Eighteenth century books. Manuscript copies are found in Bod. MSS Eng. Poet., f. 9, Jones 58, f. 5, and Rawl. Poet. 26, f. 65v; Yale Osb. MS b. 148, p. 6; Ros. MS 1083/15, pp. 46–47; Meisei University MS MR 0799, pp. 38–39, as well as in BL PB c.39 a.37. Christopher Brooke married Lady Jacob and lived across the street from John Donne on Drury Lane (O’Callaghan, English Wits, 158). See Sanderson, “An Edition,” 221–22. Sanderson notes that this poem varies greatly in its different copies. See Sanderson, “An Edition,” 233. Sanderson notes that one of the printed volumes in which this poem appears is Le Prince d’Amour (1660), 71–72. See the discussion of the poem and its context in O’Callaghan, English Wits, 158, who points out that at the time John Donne lived in Drury Lane across the street from his old friend Brooke and that literary gatherings probably took place in Brooke’s house. The last of these manuscripts is mainly a collection of eighty-five poems by Thomas Carew: see the description in CELM: http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/ repositories/rosenbach-1000.html (accessed 23 April 2019). http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/british-library-lansdowne.html (accessed 25 April 2019). See the ODNB entry https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/3706 (accessed 5 March 2019). One Francis Lee of Newman, Warwick. “son and heir of William L[ee], knight,” was admitted to the Middle Temple on 16 August 1597 (Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple From the Fifteenth Century to the year 1944, vol. 1: Fifteenth Century to 1781, ed. H. A. C. Sturgess [London: Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, 1949] 72). See https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25088 (accessed 5 March 2019). Bland, “Francis Beaumont’s Verse Letters to Ben Jonson and ‘The Mermaid Club,’” 158, points out that this manuscript “is a collection of 295 poems

246

76 77

78

79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

87

Multiple Manuscripts and two prose characters written on two stocks of paper in several different hands, one of which is responsible for organising the volume … three poems by Beaumont … are to be found at ff. 114-16 between a run of poems by Donne and Jonson, and following sequences of poems by Dudley, Lord North, an anonymous author, and Nicholas Hare. These connections suggest that the manuscript was associated with the Inner Temple.” From f. 65r through f. 71r the scribe of this part of the manuscript transcribes, in order poems found on pp. 29–39 of North’s book. North was admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1619. For a discussion of North’s participation in both systems of publication (manuscript and print), see Dianne Mitchell, “‘Or Rather a Wyldernesse’: The Changing Works of Dudley, Third Baron North,” SP 114.2 (Spring 2017): 368–94. One of the pre-1620 manuscripts with several Donne poems is BL MS 23229, part of the “Conway Papers.” See Joel Swann, “Chetham’s Library MS A.4.15: An Inns of Court Manuscript?” Journal of the Northern Renaissance 7 (2015) http://www. northernrenaissance.org/issues/issue-7-2015/ (accessed 30 April 2019). There is an edition of this manuscript by Alexander Grosart, The Farmer Chetham MS (Manchester: The Chetham Society, 1973). On Gurney, see Steven W. May, “Henry Gurney, a Norfolk Farmer, Reads Spenser and Others,” Spenser Studies 20 (2005): 183–223. Steven W. May (personal communication) believes that the manuscript could have been compiled entirely in Suffolk. See Woudhuysen, 57. Peter Beal, In Prayse of Scribes: Manuscripts and Their Makers in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 107, states that the “Feathery Scribe,” whose hand has been identified in over 100 manuscripts, probably had as “his centre of production … the vicinity of the Inns of Court.” The scribe who transcribed the collection owned by the chancery lawyer and parliamentarian Sir Chaloner Chute, BL Add. MS 33998, worked in the same area as “a legal scribe who apparently also did work for the playhouse” (Index of English Literary Manuscripts, 4 vols. [London: Mansell, 1980–93], 2.2.326). Michelle O’Callaghan, “Collecting Verse: ‘significant shape’ and the paper book in the early seventeenth century,” HLQ 80.2 (Summer 2017): 309–24. Beal, In Prayse of Scribes, 58–108. Bland, “Francis Beaumont’s Verse Letters,” 141. The Stoughton Manuscript: A Manuscript Miscellany of Poems by Henry King and His Circle, circa 1636, ed. Mary Hobbs (Aldershot, U.K. and Brookfield, VT: Scolar Press, 1990), xiii. See the discussion of this manuscript by O’Callaghan, “Collecting Verse,” 315, and Doughtie. See Christopher W. Brooks’s biography of Chute in the ODNB: https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/5412 (accessed 29 March 2019). See the discussion of this manuscript in Chapter 3. Chute’s dates are c.1595–59, so he would have been in his mid-20s at the time of the 1621 Parliament, though the poem would have circulated in the years following. This libel is included in ESL, Mi5 and appears in Bod. MS Ash. 38, p. 124, and BL MS Harley 4955, f. 86. Shorter version of it are found in BL MS Add. 22118, f. 38v and Yale Osb. MS b.197, p. 182. See Beal’s description of this manuscript, the first volume of he papers of the Wyatt family of Allington Castle, in CELM: http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/ repositories/british-library-additional-60000.html (accessed 5 April 2020).

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88 89 90 91 92

93 94 95 96 97

98

99 100

101

This manuscript shares many poems with Harv. MS Eng. 703, a collection compiled by Hugh Chomley, who was at Gray’s Inn from 1618–21. Hobbs, Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 74–78, discusses this manuscript in relation to other collections related to Henry King and his circle. See the discussion of this manuscript in Chapter 9. O’Callaghan, “Collecting Verse, 312. Love, Scribal Publication, 134. John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Kate Bennett, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) 1.413–14. For a discussion of the manuscripts in which Hoskins’s verse appears, see David Colclough, “‘The Muses Recreation’: John Hoskyns and the Manuscript Culture of the Seventeenth Century,” HLQ 61.3/4 (1998): 369–400 and Freedom of Speech, 238–50. Brief Lives, 414. See Letters to Severall Persons of Honour (1651), a facsimile reproduction with introduction and commentary by M. Thomas Hester (Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1977), 196–97. Cited in Smith (ed.), John Donne: The Critical Heritage, 109. See Smith, John Donne & the Conway Papers, 109–10. See Lamb’s forthcoming article, “‘Love is not love’: A Lyric exchange between William Herbert, Third Earl of Pembroke and Benjamin Rudyerd, the Inns of Court, and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116,” Shakespeare Quarterly (in press). He is to be distinguished from the earlier Elizabethan poet who published The Golden Aphrodite in 1577. Mary Hobbs, The Stoughton Manuscript, 311, notes that “Six of his fourteen poems were set to music by Henry Lawes.” The most important collection of Grange’s verse is found in Folger MS V.a.96, a manuscript that overlaps greatly with Hunt. MS HM 172 (see Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 124–25). These include “Since every man I come among” (53), “Be not proud, ‘cause fair and rrim” (59–60), “Sir, such my fate was, that I had no store” (63–64), “What if rude Nature hath less care exprest” (64–65), “Blind beauty! If it be a loss” (67–69), “Not that I wish my Mistris” (79–81). In the collection, for example, we find Wotton’s poem “O faithless world, and thy most faithless part” (34–35). There is also an unascribed poem, “A Lover to his Mistris” (“The purest piece of Nature is my choice” [p. 78]), which was printed in the plagiarist Samuel Pick’s Festum, Voluptatis (1639) (STC 19897), p. 16, but appears also in the two related Inns manuscripts, BL Add. 25303, f. 171v and 21433, f. 157v. On Pick’s plagiarism, see Hyder Rollins, “Samuel Pick’s Borrowings,” RES 7, no. 26 (April 1931): 204. Henry King wrote “Why slights thou her whom I approve” (81–82), “Dry those fair, those Christol Eyes” (91). The volume contains a poem that John Carey, “The Poems of Nicholas Hare,” RES n.s. 11, no. 44 (1960): 373, attributes to Hare, “Why with unkindest swiftness doest thou turn” (56–59). The poem labeled in the book “Benj. Rudier of Tears” is actually a piece written by the brother of Christopher Brooke, identified in some manuscripts as “Dr. Brookes.” Samuel Brooke was jailed along with his brother and John Donne after officiating at the irregular wedding of the poet and Ann More (Bald, 128). The poem, which appears in several manuscripts, had earlier been printed in Reliquiae Wottonianae (1651), p. 234. The poem “Of Friendship” (“Friendship on earth we may as easily find”) (48), which one manuscript (Bod. MS Ash. 36/37, f. 124) attributes

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105 106 107

108

Multiple Manuscripts to John Donne and another (Hunt. MS HM 198.1, p. 174) to “R.W.,” who may be Donne’s friend Rowland Woodward, looks like another poem from the social network centered in the Inns. See the ODNB biography of Selden: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/ 25052 (accessed 5 April 2020). These biographical details are from Vaughan’s biography in the online The History of Parliament Trust: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/ volume/1604-1629/member/vaughan-john-1603-1674 (accessed 3 April 2019). See the following on Cobbes and his work: Robert M. Schuler, “James Cobbes: Jacobean Dramatist and Translator,” PBSA 72.1 (1978): 68–74 and Richard Beadle, “The manuscripts of James Cobbes of Bury St. Edmunds (c. 1602–1685),” in The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, ed. T. Matsuda, R.A. Linenthal, and J. Scahill (Cambridge and Tokyo: D. S. Brewer, 2004), 427–42. See the biography of Salusbury by Lloyd Bowen in the ODNB: https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/24545 (accessed 30 October 2019). Salusbury entered The Inner Temple in November 1631, but left in late 1632. CELM: http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/national-library-of-wales. html (accessed 5 April 2020). See also the description of this manuscript in the National Library of Wales website: https://www.library.wales/discover/digital-gallery/manuscripts/earlymodern-period/salusbury/ (accessed 18 April 2019). See also C. C. Brown, “The Chirk Castle Entertainment,” Milton Quarterly 11 (1977): 76–86. A Chronicle of the Kings of England (1643), “The Raigne of Queen Elizabeth,” 156. In the longer passage from which this quote is taken, Baker also recalls and praises his old Oxford chamber mate, Sir Henry Wotton, commending both Donne and Wotton for their keen intelligence (or “wit”): And here I desire the Reader leave to remember two of my own old acquaintance, the one was Mr. John Dunne, who leaving Oxford, lived at the Innes of Court, not dissolute, but very neat, a great visiter of Ladies, a great frequenter of Playes, a great writer of conceited Verses, untill such time as King James taking notice of the pregnancy of his Wit, was a meanes that he betooke him to the study of Divinity, and thereupon proceeding Doctour, was made Deane of Paules; and became so rare a Preacher, that he was not only commended, but even admired that heard him. The other was Sir Henry Wooten, (mine old acquaintance also, as having been fellow pupils, and chamber fellows in Oxford divers yeares together.) This Gentleman was imployed by K. James in Embassage to Venice; and indeed the Kingdom afforded not a fitter man, for matching the Capriciousnes of the Italian Wits: a man of so able dexterity with his Pen, that he hath done himself much wrong; and the Kingdom more, in leaving no more of his Writings behind him.

109 “Neat” is a multi-faceted word. The OED lists, among others, the following definitions: I.1. b Of a person (esp. a woman), a part of the body, etc.: trim; comely; shapely; finely proportioned. I.2.a Of a person: inclined to refinement or elegance; finely dressed; trim or smart.

The Manuscript Circulation of Poetic Texts 249 I. 3†a. Exhibiting skill and precision in action or expression. Obsolete. I.3.b. Of language or speech: well chosen or expressed; brief, clear, and to the point; pithy, epigrammatic. I.3.c Of actions, etc.: involving special skill, accuracy, or precision; cleverly contrived or executed. I.4.a. Of a person or animals: habitually clean and tidy; fastidious. I.4.b. Put or kept in good order; trim, tidy. II. Senses relating to purity. †7. a. Clean; free from dirt or impurities. Also with from. Also figurative. Obsolete. 110 In one of his epigrams, Sir John Davies says that a courtier cannot find one of the best seats at the playhouse because “the clamorous frie of the Innes of court,/Filles up the privat roomes of greater price” (Krueger [ed.], Davies, 130). In the Gesta Grayorum it is decreed that, among other things, “Every Knight of this Order [established by the “Prince of Purpoole”] shall endeavour to … frequent the Theatre” (in Nelson and Elliott [eds.], Records of Early English Drama: Inns of Court, 2.403). 111 “Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden,” cited in Smith (ed.), John Donne: The Critical Heritage, 69. 112 Winston, Lawyers at Play. Paul Trolander, Literary Sociability in Early Modern England (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2014), 31, argues that, in early modern England, “manuscripts and literary networks … should be conceived as engines of social and cultural capital rather than as vestiges of a manuscript culture at odds with print.” 113 See Hyde’s biography by Wilfrid Prest in the ODNB: https://doi.org/10. 1093/ref:odnb/14333 (accessed 1 April 2019). A unique copy of the libel in which Hyde is called an “upstart” is found in Bod. MS Ash. 38, p. 87, and in ESL, Oi12, where nine surviving copies are listed. 114 For a discussion of this poem, see Michelle O’Callaghan, “Performing Politics: The Circulation of the ‘Parliament Fart,’” HLQ 69.1 (March 2006): 121–38 and Whitlock, John Hoskins, 283–88 and 392–93. Andrew McRae, Literature, Satire, and the Early Stuart State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 40, suggests that this poem was a collaborative composition of the Mitre Tavern group. ESL, Cli lists forty-two manuscript and two print examples of this constantly morphing poem. There is also a copy in the “Burley Manuscript” (Leicestershire County Council MS DG7/Lit 2 (MF 156 (Part) & MF 157, ff. 257–58). For an edition and analysis of this important manuscript, see Peter Redford (ed.), The Burley Manuscript (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2017). 115 In ESL, Bellany and McRae group the poems they have edited into categories reflecting these and other political events such as the 1612 death of the politically powerful Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury and the 1618 death of Ralegh and the poems they generated. Colclough, ‘“The Muses Recreation,” 391, states that “in some cases compilers of miscellanies are using their texts as something approaching a tool for political analysis …” 116 See ESL, Mi4. 117 See ESL, Oi4, which presents the text of the poem found in this manuscript. 118 See ESL, Mii1–10. For a discussion of later social networks connected with London and/or the Inns of Court, see Jerome de Groot, “Coteries, complications and the question of female agency,” in Ian Atherton and Julie Sanders (eds.), The 1630s: Interdisciplinary essays on culture and politics in

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121

122 123 124 125

Multiple Manuscripts the Caroline era (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2006), 189–209; Raylor, Cavaliers, Clubs, and Literary Culture; and Nicholas McDowell, “Reviving ‘the Cavalier Poets’: Coterie Verse and the Form of the Poetic Anthology,” Literature Compass 7/10 (2010): 946–53. See Colclough, Freedom of Speech, 249–50. See Michael J. Braddick’s biography of him in the ODNB http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/6609 (accessed 27 March 2015) as well as R. H. Tawney, Business and Politics under James I: Lionel Cranfield as Merchant and Minister (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958). For a discussion of this manuscript and its making, see O’Callaghan, “Collecting Verse,” 310–18. She points out that Roberts, working in the secretariat of Ludovic Stuart, Duke of Lennox, with access also to the secretariat of Robert Cecil, had “access to the scribal networks in London that constellated around the court, Inns of Court, and parliament.” For a discussion of this manuscript, see Krueger (ed.), Davies, 438–39. Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 93, mentions these two manuscripts. CELM http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/folger-v-a-200.html (accessed 27 October 2015) dates V.a.262 between 1637 and 1651 and Harv. MS Eng. 686 in the 1630s http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/harvard. html (accessed 10 March 2015). For a discussion of the former, see Laura Estill, “‘Pretty booke when I am gone’: Folger MS V.a.262 and Its Compiler,” HLQ 76.3 (Autumn 2013): 413–32. She dates the manuscript in the late 1640s and early 1650s. For information about Leare, see Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 120–23. The minor Christ Church poet, Gervase Warmestry, received his B.A. in 1625 and M.A. in 1628 before moving on to the Middle Temple. See Mary Hobbs’s ODNB biography of King (cited above). Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 74–78, discusses, among others, BL MS Sloane 1446. Literature and Culture in Early Modern London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 414.

Part III

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Collections

8

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern English Manuscripts

When one examines the range of manuscript documents from the early modern period that contain verse, one discovers a wealth of apparently unique or rare poetry that has been largely ignored. Most of this work is anonymous, some by minor or non-canonical writers, and some whose authorship is indicated only by initials or abbreviations. Now that we have good first-line indexes of Tudor poetry as well as the chronologically broader, but incomplete, Folger Index, we can check the contents of manuscript (and many print) collections to identify such pieces. In many manuscripts, between ten and twenty-five percent of the contents comprise verse of this sort. For example, fifty-four of the 157 poems in the sixteenth-century manuscript associated with Humphrey Coningsby (BL MS Harley 7392) and fifty-three of the 515 poems in Folger MS V.a.345 are apparently unique.1 Though usually not so aesthetically impressive as the best poetry from the period, this verse constitutes an important and culturally symptomatic body of work that defines a socially wider sphere of verse-composition that that delineated in conventional literary histories. In the manuscript system of literary transmission, verse composition was an ordinary part of social life, and these rare or unique poems invite study for what they may tell us about this larger field of writing. In viewing this mostly unexamined poetry, I emphasize the various purposes served by poetry writing and make some rough classifications for the poems. Scholars are aware of the numerous obscene, satiric, and po­ litically dangerous poems in the manuscript medium as well as compilers’ fondness for love poetry. Not surprisingly, many examples of such texts survive among the rare or unique verse from the period. Less noticed, however, is the wide variety of verse used for occasional purposes, usually for maintaining social and familial relationships. In this brief survey, I wish, somewhat arbitrarily, to distinguish ten different kinds of poems, arranged not strictly by genre or subgenre but by use within and beyond the particular environments in which they were composed: the university, the Inns of Court, the court, and the country house, as well as the net­ works associated with family, friends, and patron–client relationships. Like many of the original compilers, I distinguish such forms as the

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epitaph, epigram, elegy, and song,2 but I focus on the socioliterary dy­ namics of the verse, the conditions of its production and reception.

Comic or Satiric Epigrams and Epitaphs and Other Witty Verse The first category comprises the many poems, mainly satiric epigrams and epitaphs, that were designed to demonstrate the wit and sophistication of the writers as well as their participation in collegial academic, professional, or other social networks. Though a number of ephemeral productions of this sort were spread abroad widely and even gathered later in printed books,3 others have survived only in rare or unique copies in manuscript documents. Their brevity made them suitable to fill out available space in manuscripts, especially at the bottoms of pages: a combination of thrift and horror vacui partly accounts for their presence. At the bottom of a page in Margaret Bellasis’s collection, for example, there is a sexist couplet about women: women are nice when simple men doe crave it And will say No, when they fain’st would have it (BL MS Add. 10309, f. 84v) There is a particularly nasty misogynistic epitaph about a promiscuous wife who even slept with her own brother: Epitaph. 1633 Here lieth rotten she, whose name indeed was Grace Yet of the female sex, the shame & foule Disgrace. Of person she was tall, of noble race descended, Her beauty in her youth, was much to be commended. And this was all she had: for looke into her mind, And you therein a sinke that filthynes should find. To cursing, swearing, lies hir wicked tongue she used, Her bed & body both with Diverse she abused. Nay to hir brother too she gave her husbands place, She would be drunke with men, & pisst before their face. And as she grew in yeares, & beauty still decaied, o Hir Whorish face with fardo she daily overlayed. face paint When mene would court her more, she turnd hir daughter baud And entred her into her owne ungodly trade. Whether her soule is gone, I dare not to determine. Her rotten carcase here doth serve to feed the Vermin. (Cam. MS Dd.11.73, p. 305)

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 255 This piece is artfully presented within a boxed and ornamented frame on the page of the manuscript that contains it, mocking the funerary practice of memorializing a person for his or her virtues. A similar framing of a comic epitaph, this time an image of a tombstone for one William Noy, is found later in this manuscript, the poem inscribed above “Obiit. 10. Aug. 1634” (“O yee that passe this way, I pray be not so coy” [p. 370]). Of the many poems transcribed in manuscripts to fill in available spaces, Humphrey Coningsby’s manuscript (BL MS Harley 7392) has a large number.4 The Skipwith family manuscript (BL MS Add. 25707) has many such pieces. Several, for example, deal with the topic of love: Kisses are prologues unto sweeter toyes And give a tast of lovers wisht-for joyes First lett mee kisse then in the act expire my soule no other blessing would desire o lett mee kiss then rise Ile venture all To kiss, then rise I willingly would fall. (BL MS Add. 25707, f. 99v) Hartt’s that in true affection linked bee nor tyme nor death can set at Liberty. (BL MS Add. 25707, f. 103v) Love flying to my Mistris breasts not thinking their to stay kindled a fyre & burnt his wings, & could not fly away. (BL MS Add. 25707, f. 110) hee that Love wounded flyes awaye knowes not whether hee goe or staye (BL MS Add. 25707, f. 148v) At the bottom of a page of one verse miscellany, there is a scatological epigram about a newly knighted man: Call not a Turd a Turd for feare he take offence, For he is lately knighted & call’d Sir Reverence.5 (Folger MS V.a.160, p. 53) Peers and social superiors as well as social inferiors were chosen as targets for such satirical verse. In Nicholas Burghe’s anthology, another personal attack takes the form of anti-professional satire in a poem about a pretentious lawyer:

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript On Habel Tash a Contentious Solicitor Having A Great beard and A wart on his nose and affected The word, Rationall, Here lies the beard, the wart and all of Habel Tash the Rationall Whether he’s gone I Cannot tell To Heaven I hope, but yff to hell Questionles, by this his Jorney Heele gaine to bee the Di’ells Atturney And then Findso looke to’t for hee swears Yee shall together all by’th eares And weare Hell richer then thay fabell Beggard all should be by habell. Finis G C: (Bod. MS Ash. 38, p. 180)

o

fiends

In socially and politically competitive environments, such pieces were inevitable, their authors protected by the anonymity widespread in the manuscript circulation system. As might be expected, some filler-poems were added by subsequent owners of manuscripts or by people to whom the collection was lent. In one Cambridge collection containing twenty-eight poems by Donne, for example, we find at the bottom of one page a unique short love complaint written in a different hand from the main one and using different ink: My first love burnt my hart to tynder since every sparklinge eye doth kindle fyer and burne I must at Last unto a Cinder unles that Cupid grant me my desire which dayly for this blessed favor crys. harden my hart, or els put out those eyes I.G. (Cam. MS Ee.4.14, f. 76) One is tempted to say that someone who later owned the manuscript or someone to whom the manuscript was lent felt free to contribute a piece of his own to the collection, one sign of the openness of the manuscripttransmission system to participation by readers.

Polemical and Political Poems Second, in manuscript documents, there are political and obscene pieces that were unsuitable for publication in their time. Such satiric, bawdy, libelous, and politically dangerous verse has received considerable scholarly attention.6 Rare or unique texts of these sorts include the

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 257 444-line poem on the assassination of the politically oppositional Jacobean polemicist Thomas Scott (which attacks court corruption and blames Scott’s death on the Jesuits) and the long comic narrative poem “The Merkin Maker,” about a country girl’s visit to the city to purchase and be fitted with a pubic hair wig.7 Long after the failure of the attempted coup against Queen Elizabeth in 1601 by Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, an epigram on the earl and his main aristocratic supporter, Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland, was transcribed in Margaret Bellasis’s manuscript collection: Essex did spend, Northumberland did spare, He was free, this close; How shall we live then? Of Plotts, these courses both suspected are. Nay they are not suspected, but great men. (BL MS Add. 10309, f. 103v)8 This apparently unique poem expresses a dangerously sympathetic attitude toward a man finally executed for treason. A Caroline poem sympathetic to another political power-player, Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of Strafford, survives only in the Burley manuscript. In it, the earl’s voice from the grave pronounces his own obsequies.9 Strafford, who served as lord deputy, then lord lieutenant of Ireland, was brought down by his parliamentary enemies, then betrayed by Charles I, who had promised he would not allow him to be executed.10 While acknowledging his faults (“Ambition, Avarice, and Lust” [l. 29]), this poem depicts him as a politically courageous figure who dared to oppose the powerful George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, argue against the king’s overextension of royal prerogative, and face down his parliamentary foes and the “unruly rout” (l. 50) supporting them. He is portrayed as the victim of enemies from the “three kingdomes” (l. 33): Ireland, where he alienated both the Roman Catholic old English and the new Protestant planters; Scotland, whose rebels he was poised to battle with the army of Ireland; and England, where he had offended many in the pursuit of his ambitions and through his attempts, early and late, to mediate between Charles I and the House of Commons. Beheaded in 1641, Strafford could become, in death and during the time of the British Civil Wars, not only an object lesson in failed ambition, but also a Royalist protomartyr. John Cleveland’s sympathetic epitaph on him, “Here lies wise and valiant dust,” is found in many manuscript and print documents, but “Gaze on frayle man” appears to survive only in this copy.11 Both before and during the Civil Wars, poems dealing with religious topics also had political valence. For example, an apparently unique text appears in Folger MS V.a.170, a large poetry collection Peter Beal as­ sociates with Oxford:12 “On Justice Man; who denyed forty shillings towards the building of Galleries in Saint Peters at Westminster; when all the rest consented” (pp. 39–41), a piece that criticizes a Puritanical

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“Lath-man & Tile-seller,” who, for ideological reasons and against his economic self-interest, would not approve a planned renovation of a church. The same manuscript has an apparently unique long poem mocking the dialect of a disillusioned Puritan returning home from New England: A Song on New-England Will’t please you be silent, and listen to mee, And I chill tell you where I chave ha bee Cha beene in New England, but now cham come ore, I doe thinke they shall catch me there noe more. Before Is went thither, O how voke did tell How the vishes did grow and the birds did dwell All one among another in the woods and the water But when Is came there, t’was noe zitch matter. Is thought I chud a wore nothing but beaver & buffe: Because vokes did talke there were zitch things enough; Is sitt up a good many nights to watch um, But at last I perceivd, all the craut was to catch um. When Is londed there, they ameaz’d me quite Twas of all des ith week upon a Satturday night: To zee what strange low and poore buildings there were Right like the standings on Woodbery-hill Faire Then I slept all night, til twas amost Prayer-time Is marvell’d Is heard noe bells did chime: At last unto me the mystery was showne They told me they had noe Bells ith the towne. Then being warnd, to Church Is repaire Thinking to heare some certaine of Prayer. But the Parsons there noe zitch matter doe teach They scornd to pray, vor they all can preach. The virst thing they did a Sawm they did zing, Is pluckt ot my Sawm booke that with mee did bring Is thought to have stumbled out its name. But they gott a new Zong in the tune of a Same. When Sarmunt was done, there was a childe to baptize. Twas fifteen years ould as voke did surmize

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 259 T’had nor Got for nor Gammer, but stood quiett and still. The Parson durst not crosse him for feare of’s ill will. When all this was done, they hould round in a ring, I thought they would give dole, or zum pretty thing: I thought I shud a zeene a most zumptuous zight, They tooke the Communion all standing upright. Ah sirra ke [sic] I, and to diner I went, I gave the Lord praise vor that he had zent. Then there was a wedding, one being my friend Kindly invited me, and thither Is bend. When Is come to church, me thought twas a pretty thing To zee a Magistrate marry um, and had narra ring. Is thought he would a askt me the woman to give. But I think the knave stole her, and askt no body leave. Ths zame was new Dorchester: as they told me, It was the best buillding in all that Countree. And all that they told me I think it was true: Vor I think the old Dorchester as bad as the new. After a smal while, Ich was willing to part, I stayd there zo long til ‘ch was weary at my heart; Is took my leave, and thought to goe away, And I chad threescore zhillings vor zwearing to pay. When Is heard this, I zwore once more. Chad stay there no longer to zweare upon score, And zo Is bid Farewell to those fowlers and fishers, God blesse old England, and all its well wishers. (Folger MS V.a.170, pp. 245–47) The piece not only mocks the lower classes for their ignorance and their accents but also satirizes Puritan preaching, religious worship, and adminis­ tering of the sacraments. There is a body of verse, to which this poem be­ longs, attempting to reproduce and subject to derision the linguistic habits of (usually uneducated or lower-class) people from Wales, Scotland, or Ireland.

Occasional Poems to Family Members, Lovers, Friends, Patrons, and Patronesses The third classification of verse I wish to highlight comprises the cordial, affectionate, amorous, encomiastic, and elegiac poems addressed to

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family members, lovers, friends, patrons, or patronesses: verse epistles, New Year’s greetings, celebrations of births or marriages, funeral elegies and epitaphs, anagrammatic and acrostic lyrics, and pieces meant to sustain friendships and other social relations, including amorous ones. In the Skipwith family manuscript (BL MS Add. 25707), an anonymous writer, probably one of the compilers, for example, announces that he addresses an uncle out of familial obligation: Unckle My hart commands mee write because I love yow my head saith noe as privye to my weaknes that weakenes urgeth on and bidds mee prove yow and with my sickly Muse my love expresse, And in her owne excuse this can shee saye that I have knowne yow formerly to bee but to acquitt my Tymes and mee of blame, and for your vertues sake to favor mee This bearer whoe yow knowe doth love us both and whoe is trulye lov’d of yow and mee aske what hee thinks and hee will take his oath that all I write is as it seemes to bee, How much your presence here is wisht of all to his reporte my Penn and I referr it good unckle frost13 your horse least yow should fa[ll] and come with him, noe longer doe deferre it though by desarte your Freindes bee very manye here shall yow bee as welcome as to anye. Finis (BL MS 25707, f. 183r-v) The nephew, apologizing for his poetical ineptitude, assures his uncle of his love and asks that he still favor him, assuring him through a mutual friend who delivers this poetic epistle, that he is welcome to visit him. In the papers of the Salusbury family of Lleweni in Wales, there is a short verse epistle to the two actors who facilitated the publication of the first (1623) folio of Shakespeare’s plays: To my good Freindes mr John Hemings & Henry Condall To yow that Joyntly with undaunted paynes vowtsafed to Chawnte to ^us^ thease noble straynes how mutch yow merrytt by it Ile not saye ^is not sedd^ butt yow have pleased ^the lyving^ loved the deadd Raysede from the woombe of Earth a Ritcher myne

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 261 then Curteys Cowlde with all his Castelyne Assotiattes they dydd but digg for Gowlde Butt yow for Treasure mutch moare manifollde. (NLW MS 5390D, p. 141)14 The Salusbury family had theater connections, including with Shakespeare himself, and their interest in the publication of the drama­ tist’s works is not surprising. Among the numerous poetic New Year’s greetings (the early modern English equivalent of Christmas cards), we find in the Wyatt papers an apparently unique sonnet (“The Orient Pearle which on firme Rocke doth grow”).15 It was addressed to someone named Margaret (a name that means “pearl”) and is preceded by a visual emblem on the theme Nei moti immota (steadfast in the midst of turmoil): an image of a rock in a sea with a heavenly source/sun shining down on it. To the right of the sonnet is a drawing of a snail, an image that may figure a wife’s domestic confinement. In Humphrey Coningsby’s collection, BL MS Harley 7392, we find a love poem by “J.Ed.” sent as a New Year’s greeting along with a present representing the golden apple Paris awarded Venus, “A new yeres Gift wyth a golden Ball” (“Pallas, Juno, Venus on bushy Ida mounte” [f. 72v]). In another New Year’s poem someone named Giles Hayward16 an­ nounces his first poetic effort: I cannot like the swine[s] that sluggish bee To gleene the acorns, & forget the tree Nor can that vile, abhord, that monster rude (which all the soule deformes) ingratitude with his black horrid spots polute my brest Noe; pure & gratfull thoughts therein doth rest But howe shall I shewe such thoughts have your place Unlesse in shewing I my selfe disgrace Duty commaunds, weaknesse forbids to writ Wherfore these 2 me equally affright & make me stand amazd yet I have wild rather to seeme unlearnd, blockish, unskild then to neglect (what th’time & love commands) To send a Newe-years guift to your worthy hands Kindly therfore accept this infant cry & first fruites of my English poetry. (Yale Osb. MS b.62, p. 102) The same manuscript records elsewhere an apparently unique copy of Hayward’s poetic suicide note:

262

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript One Upon himselfe, who pind this on his brest before he hung himselfe G[iles]: H[ayward]: You that this horrid spectacle doe see Will seeke what th’cause of such an act should ^bee^ nere wander far; for I the actour, best Can ope the secrets of this wicked chest That dire, that blacke, that ugly feind of hell Who in all soules of reprobates doth dwell And raigne & domineere, he rild me soe He made me headlong to my death to goe Yet though my selfe I strangled, this I crave That my vilde corps may lodge in holy grave This if may granted be, upon my herse To torture sharpetong’d feinds, endorce this verse Here lyes a hopefull youth, whom the cursed Elfe Made an Aunts tongue the rope to hang himselfe. Gil[es]: Hay[ward]:17 (Yale Osb. MS b.62, p. 94)

Calvinist anxiety (or depression) is portrayed as a hellish fiend driving him to suicide. Two other apparently unique copies of Hayward poems appear in this manuscript: an anagram poem on “Mary Daye” (p. 102) and an elegy “on the death of Mr John Haines of Magd[alen]: hall: who died on Easter morning early” (pp. 112–13).18 This writer, however, is invisible in literary history. Some poems were evidently composed to accompany gifts, for ex­ ample, an apparently unique poem sent to its addressee along with a copy of Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia: Upon Sydneis Arcadia sent to his mistris Goe happie booke, the fates to workes the bl[e]sse Doe match thy worth, with this rare happinesse; That thou the most delicious booke that is unto the fairest soule should have accesse. Henceforth be stil’d a peereles happy booke, (Thy dainty happinesse if she doe brooke) Thrise happie thou when with her lillie hands Her neatest hands, thou shalt upholden be. Whose tender touch shall hold in sweetest bands19 The to thy joy, (those joyes continue the). Then shalt thou swim in seas of blessednesse, In sweetest sweets, & heavens delightfulnesse.

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 263 More happie thou when as ^the^ sparkling beames, Of her bright eyes shall on thy letters shine That far more glorious, when the planets seemes, The doth illuminate, with light divine. Those lovely eyes that boyles with fresh desires Each noble hart in Cupids burning fires. Most happy thou if with thy quaint conceits, Her quicke & high conceits thou hap to please, That in those things, her pleasing wit invents, By shewing like thou maist her fancies ease. So shalt thou service do, to this sweet Saint And with her selfe, thy selfe shalt oft acquaint. If she delight in Love, and in loves layes Of Philocleas, & Pamela’s Love And of their payns, in proes and roundelayes So it expresse, as ^it^ her sences move And when to mirth she will her selfe dispose Then Mopsaes moweso & Dorus guiles disclose ogrimaces But if to tragicke humours she be lent Of Plangus cryes and eke Partheniaes teares. Basilius sleep, his wives astonishment Pamilaes scorne, and Philocleaes feares. And if thou figure any strange passion Be sure thou doe it in the aptest fashion. Farewell I fear least I too long delay The from that good the gods ordeyns for the And doe not me upbraid another day, That thy good happes, were envied of me. But when of too much favour those doest vaunt Devolve some part to me that suffers want. (BL MS Add. 10309, ff. 86v-87v) This poem about a work originally designed for a female readership is found in a manuscript associated with a female collector, Margaret Bellasis: it focuses on the emotions of the romance’s female characters, assuming familiarity with the conventions of love and the romance plot of Sidney’s popular fiction. Another apparently unique poem from the same manuscript was meant to accompany either the gift or the loan of a book to a beloved, “upon his sending his Mistris a booke” (“Goe daintie booke, till now no happy booke” [ff. 83v–84]).

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript

This poem would have been sent as a “separate” along with the gift it introduces. In Sir John Perceval’s manuscript, a poem accompanies a similar gift: Upon sending of a Book & the cause why ‘twas sent no sooner Madam when this shall kisse your hands I looke you’le aske why yow no sooner had thy Booke & thus your selfe you’le answer— I see the cause why’it came not all thy time the Gent[leman] was hamering of a Rime or two which dribbled from him so he findes ten dayes too little for to write ten lines In troth ‘tis so!—If yow but thinke it so Anathama to him that dare say No. But Madam I protest ther’s some thing more then this, why that yow had it not before. for bookes for Ladyes must like Ladyes be drest up with some fine knackes of bravery but the booke Taylor had not made the Clothes & rather then send the naked sheetes I chose (for it would savour of imodesty to’have nakednesse presented to your eye) to keepe in private as undrest Ladyes doe lye cloystered up at home from Publique view, & such is yours for who but sees yow findes in yow & whole Hideparke of Beuty shines. (BL MS Add. 47111, f. 88v) The poet explains that he wanted to “dress” the book with appropriate complimentary verse and that he was a slow writer. When gift-giving ran in the opposite direction, recipients could re­ spond in verse to express gratitude. One poem on a half-sheet tipped into BL MS Add. 61683 is such a gesture: from godly Givers many blessings rise but wicked gifts, they say, put out the eyes: my freind that gave this in it shewd her love sett not on earthlie, but on things above: the gift is godly, godly was the Giver, thus from the good doth good proceed for ever. (BL MS Add. 61683, f. 79)

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 265 An apparently unique copy of a poem by Robert Creswell, found in Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 246, a manuscript originating in Cambridge,20 was sent to Viscount Falkland: To the most accomplisht, his highly honorable Lord the Lord Viscount Falkland, upon the receipt of a book from his Lordship.

with a lettre

If books be fairest pictures of the mind As minds of things! What titles can I find To paint this beauteous myrrour? Where I do Veiw the great Author & the Giver too: Who justly may give that which is his owne As well by use, as by Possession. For in your memory I seeme to looke Not here alone, but in each learned booke: Livy, Herodotus & Zenophon with all the learned tribe, are yours alone; others may claime them too by the same hold With stationers, or as your misers gold, Our libraryes are plagiaries, unjust To keepe them captives wrapt in mold & dust Tis wisely done to chaine them, they would forth And fly to you, who know their use &worth. What folly now inhumane then to part The instrument to him that hath the Art? o Who gives Dametaso, pen & inke? or tryes a stupid shepherd A citty-witt with logique? Tis no prize. in Sidney’s Arcadia Apollos pencill scornes a ruder hand, Farmer, that card & compasse metes no land. Did Banks reade Grammer to his learned Horse?21 Would Mydas for a lyre a bag-pipe oscorse? obarter, exchange Al Fooles by skill are measur’d, you are Lord of both, to both an equall grace afford: The Curious searcher of all Ages, thus They are to you examples, you to us Who can a Prodigie convert to truth And reconcile Antiquity with Youth. The Grecian Critiques gaze to see one lead Their language captive, others feare to read: Th’ accents bring some to an enclitique death, Some ere they can pronounce it, spend their breath But though to’th Romane yoke, it lowe did bow Graecia was never conquer’d untill now

266

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript The Muses are your handmayds, & admire To so rich gloryes deck their thredbare quire, Nor does your lawrell crake in gawdy flames And your Philosophyes without hard names: Reason, unmask’t there makes no false pretense Nor feares disparagment in speaking sense. Oh! our unfrutfull labour, who have wrought And tyr’d our braines to understand just naught In humane witt we beggares turne & fooles To learne the canting language of the schools. You have Truths lookingglasse, Explain this As cleare & faithfull as the Nocion is You lead the triumph of Immortal Ben And fluent Sandys runs brighter from your pen. This creditts the Profession, this, tis this which adds autority to the Frontipeece: This name makes currant & endeares the sale Beyond a licence, though Poeticall. Your favour makes me frely dare write true Who deignes to grace those arts, which honour you. (Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 246, ff. 26–27)

In the left margin is the note “Cyrill & Synisius/ Graece. in folio.”22 The poem, full of literary references, praises Falkland’s learning, especially his knowledge of Greek texts. The prose letter that accompanied the poem is reproduced in this manuscript (f. 27). This is a rare case of the preservation of both the thank you poem and a letter enclosing it. George Morley’s manuscript has a verse epistle from an apologetic, reluctant, but literarily self-conscious versifier to female addressees to whom he has promised to write: A plague on barrenness! yet no excuse Shall daube the current of a willing Mu[se] Muse Il’e write; & purpose to avoyd the crim[e] Of breaking promise, though I send coarse rim[e] Shall such divine ones but command a fitt Of our dull mortall & too earthy witts And shall not wee with greediness desire To filch a little of Prometheus fire? To warme invention, & to make our verse Quick-spiritted, salt, nimble, subtle, terse, To leave a Rellish in the Ladyes eare And that to read them twise they may not fear Good Ladyes! that have pleasd to cast your Eye Upon a stark sad peice of poetry;

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 267 That neere out stript John Hopkines, or the Mus[e] of good Robert Wisedome & their meane thewes A Bratt of sorrow, fruit of Discontent from a dead quill & slow Genius sent, O that I Could bee happy & devise Where evry line should Sparkle & each word Should witt grace, life, & emphasis afford were I but like some neat & needy Host, Which in his howse hath neyther bak’t nor Roa[st] To fead the eager stomack of his guest Yet doth with mirth & good discourse him feast But I am rich in neyther & have calld you hee[re] Quite to delude you, in your tast & eare To an empty-bak’t-meate, unto a Mess Of very Nothing meere Emptynesse Yet stay. If you or you or either bee but barely thought of in this Poetry But the blessd Name of Isbell or Mary Shee Shebars Queene & shee the queen of Fayry. (Westminster Abbey Library MS 41, f. 45r-v) This would-be poet sends what he calls “coarse rime” to women whose names (Isabel and Mary) he mentions at the end of the poem. This poem in George Morley’s collection does mention the psalmodist John Hopkins and the sixteenth-century reformer Robert Wisdom, whose translation of two Psalms were included in the Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter, and whom the Oxford poet Richard Corbett mocked in one of his poems, “To the Ghost of Robert Wisdom.”23 These allusions, from a more conservative ecclesiastical point of view, suggest a Christ Church, Oxford academic origin of the text, perhaps Morley himself. In a manuscript associated with the Inns of Court,24 a complimentary poem written for someone named Elizabeth Sydley is preceded by an anagram on her name: Elizabeth Sydley An[a]g[ram]: All die by these eyes Fame thou arte false & telleste lyes of murders done by Sydleyes eyes why I have seen hyr & doe live suer’d of the wonder which thou didste give when I but sawe hyr by reflex I stylde hyr mirror of hyr sex calld hyr the Comett of our tyme and Kent the inhospitable Clyme

268

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript but now seene in Dyamiter confesse that thou and I doe erre Fame thou arte false & tellest lyes ther’s noe man kild by Sidlies eyes. (BL Add. MS 25303, f. 136v)

This poem, which also appears in Harv. MS 703 (p. 16), was written by Sir Albertus Morton, the half-nephew of Sir Henry Wotton. Folger, MS V.a.160, a poetical collection compiled by Matthew Day,25 has several apparently unique anagram poems: two to Jane Rider, and one each to Elizabeth Plummer and Judith Sondes. One of the poems to Rider has a series of anagrams of her name using English, Latin, and Greek words in the left margin next to lines of verse that explain them: Jane Rider Anagram: De ira in me Jarre deny. Nay redier Ira ne redi. Rare I Deny. I rid neare. I ey’d near’r Reri dea ni Ni rea ride R: in re dea J:de ανηρ Ira ne ride. Read in ire.

Anagrammes upon Mrs Ja: Ri: by J: P. Indeed shee’s free from anger, do but try And you shall finde she doth all Jarre Deny Nay Readier, to forgive then erst before To be displeas’d: Anger return noe more Her motto is Demand a favour shee’l reply Sir it is yours, ’tis Rare that I Deny. When I first saw her ride I neare admiring (Whilst I eyd near’r) at those lookes soe firing Shee’s to be thought a Goddesse but—but what? Unlesse th’art guilty Jane laugh, laugh at that Th’art indeed a Goddesse, hee’s happy can Point to him self and say, Loe heere thy man. Smile not if angry; consume my lines with fire Not me; Read but doe not Read in ire. (Folger MS V.a.160, p. 7)

As if enough were not enough, seven more anagrams were added to the right of the poem, running sideways.26 Interestingly, the same manu­ script includes a poem that presents itself as an anti-anagram poem, as well as a pure meta-poem: Richard Pipe his Anagramme Richard Pipe What neede I turne the letters of thy name Dear freind to finde some sencelesse Anagramme. Or say by shuffling them I might from thence By chance pick out Ortographie and sense

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 269 Ten to one’twould noe better suite with thee Then with these times some antique Armorie Eyther’twould be too big, or flatter much Or wrong thee, being too little, or else such As might fitt others too; indeed this same Commends a suite but not an Anagrame. Let thy name stand as’tis, it limmes thee more To life, and speakes thee better then a score Of broken Anagrammes, though nere soe good, For as a diamond is understood By its owne name soe well, that should I say Of stones it is the hardest, bright as day Priz’d above gold, cuts glasse, all this must want Of this expression, ‘tis a Diamond: Even soe thine owne undislocated name Makes up thy fullest, and best Anagramme. {I then conclude that neyther more nor lesse {Then Richard Pipe, can Richard Pipe expresse. A: D. (Folger MS V.a.160, pp. 9–10) The same collection records an acrostic poem to Simon English (p. 42), the person to whom the dramatist Thomas Dekker dedicated his Magnificent Entertainment (1604): To the most noble deserving of all worthy respect Simon English Esq/ D.D.D. by St: Bradwell S-ir I am bolde to venture a conceit I-nto a judging hand: wishing the weight M-ight prove’t a currant peece of Coyne though not O-f gold: Th’Hesperian Apples were begott N-earer to Phoebus,whose bright Delphick beames E-ternize divine Poems; These weake gleames N-ourishment tooke but from that blazing starre G-ave notice of our Sunnes rise & from farre L-ead earth to heaven. Then count it (Sir) noe blame I-n wayes though farre from worth to prayse his name S-oe to your selfe this kinde construction make H-e gives some thanks that di[d] much love pertake. (Folger MS V.a.160, p. 42)

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A manuscript owned by someone named Thomas Cross (BL MS Harley 6057) begins with “An Acrostic upon my name” (f. 1). Acrostic poems, of course, were useful as verse addressed to patrons or patronesses. For example, the Burley manuscript has an apparently un­ ique sonnet-acrostic addressed to Mary Villiers, mother of George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham: “Most graceful Mary mother of that pearle” (f. 335v).27 It has also a Latin anagram with accompanying poem addressed by one “A. B. Shewll” to Richard Weston, lord treasurer (f. 345).28 An apparently unique poem for Lady Beata Poole not only spells her name with the initial letters of each line but also begins each of its three stanzas with a portion of her name, before putting the pieces together in the next-to-last line of the piece: On Mistris Poole, commonly called the Lady Poole L ADY in Call and Worth; Rich, Faire, and Wise A nd therefore Soveraigne of all Hearts and Eies: D ebas’d in this poore Register of your Fame, Y et give mee leave to Analize your Name. B EATA; sure your Parents Prophets were, E xquisite Prophets; for your name doth reare A Blessed Fortune to you. Happy Name, T hat thou art hers, who is her selfe the same! A Peereles Mint, a Poole of precious things. P OOLE; For in Thee are many living Springs O f Honour, Beauty, Wealth, Witt, Purity: O may they ther spring, and ne’er by dry! L ADY BEATA POOLE; all Three in one: E mbrac’d by Thee, embracing Thee alone. (Folger, MS V.a.103.1, f. 55) A manuscript associated with the Fairfax family has an astoundingly long acrostic poem (“Faith’s firm preserver & the Northeren guide”) spelling out “Ferdinando Lord Fairfax Generall of the forces raised for the defence of King and Parliament in the North” (BL MS Add. 11743, f. 16r–v). Another acrostic poem, following an anagram about its sub­ ject, is a piece transcribed in a double column, with the letters of the person’s name appearing at the start, the middle, and the end of the lines: Annagram Henry Foulis I floure shyn

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 271 H ere is one floure whose splendor and whose breat H ath caused flora disasteemd on Eart H E lect the floure of never fadding Fam E xcelling Artists of Admired Nam E N ate floure of Time whoe doth her honor Crow N ow preordaind the floure of high Renow N R are fancies floure whose light each one be fa R arely Transcends like as the Sun each sta R Y eelding Contentment Comforts floure of Jo Y ea whose Sweet sight Earts pleasurs doth destro Y F loure of Delight whom I may say in brei F ormd is to be mongst Learnings flours the chei F O rdaind Inventions floure and muses To O who in Arts doth all the world outgo [O] W orths flagrant floure whose ^only^ sho W onder does bring to all who thee doth know W L ovs decent floure whose Matchles paralel L o search the orb Their is not one doth dwel L I ntire Religions floure whose purit I is witnesd by thy works sincerit I S hould wit preswme to Blossome forth ^thy^prai S urely her Muse beyond her spher should ri Se (Bod. MS Wood F.34, f.184)

This word game necessitates the elison of unrelated words. Although, later in the century, John Dryden mocked anagrammatic and acrostic poems in “MacFlecknoe,” such verse was valued because it suited the circumstances of private social relations.29

Site-Specific Poems In the fourth classification, there are poems that, within a restricted environment, comment on events of local interest, often sharing witty or satiric perspectives. Such specific pieces were addressed to the kinds of communities found, for example, at the universities or the Inns of Court. In Folger MS V.a.103, there is a laudatory funeral poem for an Oxford tavern-owner who died in office as mayor, a man remembered later as the father of Sir William Davenant and as the man Shakespeare allegedly cuckolded: On Mr Davenantt who died att Oxford in his Maioralty A fortnight after his Wife. Well sceinceo th’art deade, if thou canst mortalls heare, Take this just Tribute of a Funerall teare,

o

since

272

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Each day I see a Corse and now no Knell Is more Familiare then a Passing-Bell; All die no fix’ed inheritance men have, Save that they are freeholders to the grave. Only I greive, when vertues brood Becomes Wormes meate, and is the Cankers foode. Alas that unrelenting death should bee At odds with Goodnesse! Fairest budds wee see Are soonest cropp’t; Who know the fewest crimes, Tis theire pererogative [sic] to die bee-times Enlargd from this Worlds misery: And thus hee Whom wee now waile made hast to bee made free. There needes no loud Hyperbole sett him foorth, Nor sawcy Elegy to bely his worth; His life was an Encomium large enough: True Gold doth neede no foyles to sett itt off Hee had choyce giftes of nature and of arte; Neither was Fortune wanting on her parte To him in Honours Wealth, or Progeny: Hee was on all sides blest! Why should hee dye? And yett why should he live his mate being gone, And Turtle like sigh out and endlesse moone? No, no; hee loved her better, and would not so easily So easily lose what hee so hardly gott. Hee liv’d to pay the last Rites to his Bride, That done hee pin’d out fourteene dayes and died. Thrive happy paire! Oh could my simple Verse Reare you a lasting Trophie ore your your Hearse, You should vie yeares with time; Had you your due, Eternety were as short liv’d as you. Farewell and in one Grave now you are deade Sleepe undisturbd, as in your marriage beed. (Folger MS V.a.103, f. 9)

o

moan

Later in the same manuscript, however, in the category of “Merry and Satyricall” epitaphs, there is a very different poem about the same man by “M[r] W.S.” (possibly William Strode, though it is not included in the autograph collection of Strode’s poems, Corpus Christi, Oxford MS 325): On Mr John Davnant Who died on Thursday Aprill the 18. 1622 being thee Major of Oxford Dedicated to the Worthlesse and Wittlesse Townsmen Kinde Towne Freindes had I witt enough to sweare

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 273 Or little judgments knew what goodnesse were, And so trew sorrow to yow as unknowne, o As you have few dy that deservs our mooneo; moan I would not stirr your Lazy greife nor preach Old Welladaies and woes beyond your reach: For with fagg ends of doctrine you exhorte To worke out teares mixt your Hollidaies sport. But since your much suspected ignorance I judgd unwitting, what a blow this chance Hath given your corporation; and Davnant deade, Left you unactive members without Head: List well what cause of sorrow my Muse beares, The Civill Heads gone, but hath left you the Eares. You have lost a Major who whylst you might him call yours by his owne discretion eas’d you all Of your deserved absurdities; none stirrd A Toungue against Towne-Government: no word Against officers unlanguag’d that scarse know A wise worde to speake, but speake good Master Snow. Schollers could not bee witty, but when th’assay To jest att you, Davnant stood in theire way, And made them damne theire pens; For Whylst Hee bore Th’office no councells held yee as before To bearde the Accademy as earst yee durst, He sought wether Ned the Fourth or third raigned first. To find the oldest priviledge; neither bore your Majors such Envy to make Magdalens poore. Oh ‘twere unthankefull rashly to putt down and begger Colledg[e]s that enrich the towne! Now your deliverer that sett you free o From Bobbso and Pasquilles (o hard destiny mocks to you not him) by death is freed from paine, And you lie ‘ope to Scholler witts againe. Now I would wish you howle, else wee shall deeme Your grossnese held not Davnant in esteeme Worth Him, and there begines a quarrell just To Raile and therefore howle; in deed you must, your judgments will be question’d else, and you thought To feede no more then what goes downe your throate. I’de say more to you but what my greife would show Antike mock’te greife, and ill apparelld woe If you suppose Davnants a common beare Or greive in fashion, and no bloudye teare Reserv’d only for Him bee shed, for Him Only, whose compleate worth did others dimme;

274

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript If yee can not plucke upp one grone or sigh: That growes neare to the heart, and to a height Screw upp your sorrow dy yees and for your sakes Your dull succession shall spend wine and Cakes, And mourne as you for him: Whylst worthy hee to be bemon’d of better spirits, shall bee Scholarlike greiv’d for and theire watry eies Shall wash theire stubborne sinne. Do not dispise This seasonable motion worthy yee That weere Minerva’s livery, only Hee Only hee was capable to bee beemon’d by you, And thus distinguisht from the common crew Of dying Townsmen: for His worthy parts Spake Him part scholler, and neare to the Artes. Nor shall this act breed custome no one beside Shall flow your teares unto so high a Tide. (Folger V.a.103, f. 22r-v)

As the poem continues the praise of Davenant, including his role as buffering the conflict between town and gown, the poet mercilessly cri­ ticizes the Oxford citizenry, making the piece at once a laudatory elegy and a satire. One university manuscript, Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 246, has three funeral elegies for Thomas Knowles written by those who knew him: the first anonymous, the second and third by “S[amson] Briggs” and “Is[aac] Ollivier” (both of King’s College, Cambridge).30 They represent, at once, an academic social tribute and a competitive exercise: Upon the death of Thomas Knowles Chorister of Westminster Abby. Lay downe thy lute Apollo: doe not trye To tune an Elegie. Thy little string is splitt, & in him all: Tis musicks funerall. Thy lute’s as silent now, as when before A Tortesse on the shore The fayrest coppie of thy Daphne’s dead, While shee doth farther spread; And with her green & ever-blooming bayes Kisses thy quikning rayes. Complaine I not because he sings with thee, While Daphne’s but a Tree.

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 275 Who dar’d the Soule a Harmony to state Did not prevaricate Since accent out such Anthems noy I could But a spirituall mould And he whose voyce was not in throat or tongue It’s soule was all a Song. Mongst al those vollyes of wild spirits fled Late f[l]y their earthly bed Now sang so sweet, so young: on whose green layes There is entayl’d all Praise Who lyving to himself was in one thinge A Nightingale & Spring But now (alas!) that youthfull spring is gone The Nightingale is none. Or rather mounted on the nimble sphaeres Charmes now but Angelles eares The Lute to Heaven is flow’n (I meane his mind) The case is left behind. (Bod. Rawl. Poet. 246, f. 25) Upon the Same. Canst thou penne a sigh, or limbe Thy fancy like a heavy groane? Then sitt with me & mourne for him Whom aged [Nest]re doth bemoane In sighing winds & weeping eys which rayne downe funerall Elegies Mark how swiftly Thames doth glide As if it loath’d the shoares embraces Hark with what murmurs it doth chide The stony earth who hides those graces Which were a patterne unto nature Whereby she wrought all comely feature Pale Sarjeant of mankind could you Arrest this youth in earely prime? Ere that the fatall debt was due For which he stood engag’d to time! Methinks the beautyes of his face Shold have disarm’d thee of thy mace

276

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Was it the golden locks he wore Did mak thee covett such prize Or Argus lately from his store Lent thee a paire of flaming eyes? That seeing thou didst love & seeke To kisse the Roses of his cheeke. Not so. It was the Heavenly Quire Whose jealous eares had lately found How like themselves he toucht the lyre Lending a soule to musicks sound And so in envy of our eares Tranplanted him into theire sphaeres. S[amson]. Briggs31 (Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 246, f. 25r-v) Upon the same Is[aac]: Ollivier32 Who heard thy voice, sweet Tom, if voyce’it were And not the musique of a blessed sphere Scarce could of winter dreame, much lesse of death When gentle ayres playd in thy numerous breath For Time seem’d young when thou beganst to sing And all things smil’d as in a smooth-brow’d spring; The winged Singers, minstrelles of the ayre Natures musitians, silken foes of care Seem’d thee to choose to be their vernal stage Oft Philomel wisht closed in that Cage, Freely to sing, nest of each trembling note How would she warble in thy dainty throte? Nor could I blame that birds which clustring flew On thy beautyes feild, thy pleasing hew Where Venus walk’d, where rose the Graces bowre Entrayld with Lillyes & the purple flower Faire Cloris husband in the troubled yeare When his wife fled was wont to seeke her there. No feare of death where ne’re was deadly sin Bright stars thy eyes, the milk path was thy skin Fairer yet inward, nothing spoke thee foule, Thy Soule was musick, & thou musicks soule. Some only wondring at thy straines so choyce Did cry too lowd It was a Heavenly voyce. (Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 246, ff. 25v-26)

Though the first poem is anonymous, it is likely that it was written by a Cambridge author who was a friend of Briggs and Ollivier: an­ other Rawlinson manuscript, Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 147, has verse by

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 277 several of their Cambridge associates, including Henry Molle and Clement Paman.33 Another Oxford collection, Folger MS V.a.170, offers a group of poems dealing with a local cause célèbre, the unjust capital punishment of Anne Greene, a servant girl who was impregnated by her master’s grandson and suffered a miscarriage in the second trimester of preg­ nancy. She was found guilty of infanticide by a court presided over by a judge who was a relative of her master, and on 1 December 1650 was hanged, cut down, and given for an autopsy to the Oxford phy­ sicians who requested the body. When signs of life were detected, she was revived on the table by two doctors (one of whom, Thomas Willis, became a prominent surgeon and is credited with inventing the term “neurology”34). After this supposed miracle, she married and had several children. A series of pamphlets was published shortly after what was interpreted as her providential revival and divine dis­ approval of the behavior of her social superiors: one of these—Richard Watkins’s Newes from the Dead (1651)—contains a group of poems by university authors.35 Six of these pieces are found in this Folger manuscript, but one Latin poem, a four-line Latin preface of another, and the first fourteen lines of another poem are found only in the Folger manuscript: This wonder surmounts all: see here is bred Posthumous life even when the Mothers dead. Part dyed before, part survived after breath The Embryo’s birth’s abortive, and her death. Orpheus and AEsculape were here outvyed Cause both their Arts concenter’d in one Guide. Suitours courage, all’s purg’d by Sacrifice: The Parent slaine, doth now a Virgin rise, Forgetfull she did Gallow Lotus trye And Lethe taste; let all cry Amnesty. For who can thinke her guilty, whom the Tombe Does thus declare unworthy of her doome? Whom law, whom Physick could not kill, whose date Souldiers repriv’d, Three Committees of Fate. (Folger MS V.a.170, pp. 406–7) The texts printed in Newes from the Dead are apparently drawn from the group-composition effort that the manuscript document (at least in part) preserves. Another apparently unique poem in this Folger manuscript refers to the 1633 fire that destroyed the northern end of London bridge:

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Upon the fire upon London Bridge by Th: Mott: Not five houres ere the sunne, the worlds great eye Unmaskt our Hemispheres obscurity, London’s vast bridge proud in suppressing Thames Burn’t, as if the river belch’t out oyly flames: Th’amazed people rose when fresh supplies Could not be call’d for for distracted cryes; Nay th’envious water seeming to conspire, On both sides damn’d the way to quench the fire, Besides, to make this spectacle more cruell The woombes of th’Arches laboured with fuell, And brought forth firebrandes, such incendiaries As liv’d to ruine theyre owne territories: Prodigious birth, which caus’d the childe to burne, That it the mother might to ashes turne It had bin mercies miracle had some one Now bin forewarned by a vision To leave his Arke. but fate decreed it not And we have many Sodoms, scarce one Lot; Soe now the angry heav’ns have thought it meete That should be seene a bridge, which seem’d a streete Th’opposing, loving houses, which togeather Kist, and with stony leggs stood out all weather, Have yet this solace in theyr obsequy They joyntly towr’d and prostrate mingled lye. Can you beleeve, amidst these terrors, some should laugh at greife, as Nero at Burnt Rome? That the consumption of such unknowne wealth which should command true helpes could move to stealth Sure had they bin but of Prometheus mold Theyr theft had aim’d at fire, not at gold; I wish it had, Pray God theyr soules ne’re dwell They need not stealt[h], enough’s reserv’d in hell. And after all let’s know, this sad event Was not soe much a chance, as punishment; Goodnesse preserves what is destroy’d by sin The bush burn’t not consum’d, God being within. Should fire catch Papists roofes, the Pope could make Themselves to burne like Martyrs at the stake On this condition, that the same should be A freedom from an after Purgatorie: Or if a new combustion e’re shall On some divine, lay Puritans chamber fall It being then the Sabbath, without doubt

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 279 His zeale may weepe, not sinne to worke it out, But if he stirr’d, hee’d thinke his fayth to blame went he not cooly through an AEtna flame Like Shadrack and the rest, whoe not dismayde Walk’d, while the harmlesse fire about them playd. But wonders have theyr period; Heav’n prevent All from soe mercilesse an element, And may it nothing but its due consume Till the world blazes at the day of Doome/ (Folger MS V.a.170, pp. 5–7) This fire, like the more spectacular one of 1666, attracted national at­ tention and offered an opportunity to attack religious enemies—here both Puritans and Catholics.36 The author, Thomas Mott, was a student at Cambridge.

Competitive Versifying and Literary Appropriations A fifth group of rare or unique poems—answer-poems, parodies, or imitations of received texts, or as supplements to them—are the product of a context of competitive versifying and practices of literary appro­ priation. A poem in Challoner Chute’s manuscript imitates, or responds to a much-transcribed piece attributed to William Strode (which pre­ cedes it), “Upon the restoring of a borrowed Watch” (“Goe and Count her better howers”):37 Upon a Watch sent unto a Mistresse Goe happy Watch, into her harmelesse hand who forced me to yield without command; Goe, see you serve her truly, let the Sun and you agree, as she & heaven have done in her best Actions; as her pulse shall beate even & steady, so doe thou repeate by thy most certaine Balance stroke for stroke; But if griefe or infirmity provoake any distemper in her, lett her know by thy distracted Ballance, she doth grow weaker & more infirme, and then as shee recovers & growes strong let thy stroake bee certaine & steady. Serve her too in this, If (as she yet hath not) she does amisse, keepe no time, but stand still, & lett her know the time is lost, or worse, while she doth so. Thou needst not flatter her, but be as free

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript as he that sendes & gives this Charge to thee; and in thy Clicking language let her know that Truth, which Seneca hath long agoe Deliver’d to posterity, that sayd, that what of life is passd is lost & dead; and what’s to come Death holds, & doth convoy as but by Minutes; so that we enjoy none but this Instant, & now that & this Minute is gone, & more; since then such is times swiftnesse, she redeemes it, & will Catch times aged forelocke: To this end, this Watch serves her as Philip’s Boy, each houre to warne her of Death, & to provide that Christian Armour which may preserve her spottlesse before him that knew to suffer for, not act, mans sin. She will not, as some wanton Ladyes doe, putt thee to numbers which they doe bestow to paynt their faces, or in Censuring those for fooles, who are not curious in their Cloathes, & Cariage too; as if salvation were effected by such Cause: no, thou shalt heare & count her howers of prayer, her piety in making peace, her Liberality to such as want; Th’art happy in such handes as strive to act the least of Godes Commandes. Wherefore once more be gone, goe true, farewell, would I were in thy place, I like’t so well. (BL MS Add. MS 33998, ff. 13v–14)

Strode’s original poem, which precedes this piece in the manuscript, is only twelve lines, so the response is an extraordinarily long. It shows deep interest in the mechanisms of the watch and broadens the focus from love complement to religious thoughts on mortality. Strode’s lyric provided the prompt for this performance. A unique poem and answer set in a Bodleian manuscript records a set of short poetic messages scratched on a window (one of the media used for verse transcription in the period):38 A young Gentleman, servant to the lord of Notingham Admirall of England, who gave the Anchor, as badge of his office; was a suitor to a rich Lady above his degree who wrote thus in a window. If I be bold The Anchor is my hold.

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 281 Under which, a Corrivall, coming into the room, wrote thus. Yet feare the worst What if the Cable burst? (Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 66, f. 31v) An answer poem could be a political rejoinder. There is a unique answer poem that responds to a widely circulated piece, “Avant you giddyheaded multitude,”39 which hails the Duke of Buckingham’s return from the (disastrous) Isle of Rée expedition: “Avaunt, avaunt, Noe those are speeches rude” (Cam. Trinity College MS O.1.35, ff. 4v-5). Headed simply “Reply,” it is set in a section of the manuscript that records other poems about the Duke and his final assassination.40 Answer poems could be imitative of the work of well-known poets, highlighting the openness of the system of manuscript transmission to participation by readers or collectors. Peter Calfe’s manuscript has a short salacious poem obviously imitating Ben Jonson’s admired lyric from Epicoene, “Still to be neat”: “A Motion to pleasure” (“Still to affect, still to admire” [BL MS Harley 6917, f. 41]).41 Margaret Bellasis’s anthology contains a poem obviously inspired by Sir Walter Ralegh’s famous lyric, “What is our life? a play of passion”: By a dying Man what is our life? a play, the stage, this earth: The Actors, wee: the entrance, is our birth: The port, fancy: passion lendeth parts As various as our states, our ends, our harts. The Musicke that twixt Sceanes is interlac’d, Short-mingled-mirth, to sweaten lifes distast. Our mother[s] wombs the tyring houses be. where we are drest to act this Tragedie Heavens sharp-judicious-eye, Spectator is, That censures every sceane we act amisse. Our winding sheets that shroud us from the Sunne Are like drawne curtaines, when the play is don. T’untire us then we ^retire^ to our tombe where all’s put of we tooke from mothers wombe An after banquet makes the play complete wormes are our guests our Carkase is their meat Thus ‘gan our play, thus ends it, & thus I My play have ended: & now praying die. (BL MS Add. 10309, ff. 125v–26)42

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This piece closely follows the language and content of Ralegh’s poem. It is an imitation, if not a brazen appropriation, of the earlier lyric. One literarily self-conscious piece, by Anthony St. Leger, explicitly names Ben Jonson, along with John Donne and John Fletcher, as poetic influences: To the Author his brother Brother I thanke you that you lette me have this picture of your Love where in I crave pardon though so incestuous I prove to sweare her for my mistris is your love. Yet for I know not where it toucht on you but I might chaunce to give it more then dwe I borrowed others judgments: they read on And needs would know the Author: I sayd Donne They easily beeleeve but adde this more Donne had out-don all that hee did beefore: I told them ^then^ t’was Fletcher they reply For witte it might but heers devinyty A Theame he seldome treats of; now I thought it would surely take, and said Ben Johnson wrought it they smyle and without doubting what he can swere this must needes come from a gentleman Now chide me for introth I did confesse and then though they praiseds still they wonder Lesse But since you say ‘tis rough yours is the penne And as you love me make her sitte agen By Anthony St Leger43 (Harv. MS Eng. 703, p. 42) Literary culture was familiar enough for writers to think of themselves as becoming part of it when they composed their own verse. This poem advertises its author’s literary sophistication, and that of its addressee and their friends. It also assumes the existence of a sphere of literary discourse separate from ordinary communication and it assumes the ability of all the parties to recognize the poetic styles of writers such as Donne, Fletcher, and Jonson.

Verse with Ethical or Religious Intent In the sixth category of verse, there are poems of advice, conventional wisdom, and religious belief such as might be entered into a personal commonplace book. Sometimes these are simple aphorisms such as: “Wisdom the more men get, the more they crave / And think the more

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 283 they get, the less they have” (Bod. MS Malone 19, p. 74). One poem tries to apply the Aristotelian golden mean to the topic of personal ambition: Who clime aloft, oft rise to fall who creepe to lowe, are tread of all the meane of theis extreames is best and in this meane, I meane to rest. (Hunt. MS HM 198.2, f. 86v) Another poem cautions against lust, greed, gluttony, and brawling: Let wysedome the direct, set god before thy face al carnal lusts reject, al vertues do embrace seke not to myche for welth, nor careles be of gayne by diet kepe thy helth, from surfets do refrayne shunne them that use to braule, use quiet wordes alwaye o fly from the whorishe caule,o in maryage make thy staye. spider web W Moer (Cam. MS Ff.5.14, f. 110) This piece is by William More of Loseley, written in his hand in a Cambridge manuscript.44 He was the grandfather of John Donne’s wife, Ann More. Many of More’s poems survive in the archives of the Surrey History Center and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 117 has a large number of both Latin and English short gnomic pieces, including the following unique poems, mostly couplets, that offer useful conventional wisdom: If judgement treads not one the heels of witt And curbe invention with his golden bit Twill neare looke backe unto his proper want But still his steps wil be exorbitant.// A carefull witt with late repentance taught Wher better never had then soe deare bought./ They that in loves blind pathes doe learne to plod Forgett themselves, their countrye, and theyre god. Men say it, and wee ^often^ see it come to passe Good turnes in sand, shrewde turnes are writt in brasse./ Best pleased is he when as he wished him worst As still the foxe faynes best, when hes most curst

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript There never yit was emperor or kinge Could boast that he had fortune in a stringe. If that bright honor have one minutes stayne An hundred years skant can it clense agayne.// Each man can say, and noe man can deny it That warre is sweet to those that have not tryed it./ Alasse, alasse poor gentrye smale avayles And virtue lesse if land, and riches fayle. He quencht the fires eare it to burne began So he may say I came, I saw, I wan

o

won

Take Idlenes away, and out of doubt Cupids bowe breakes, and all his lamps goe out: More glorious sunnes adorne ^fayre^ Londons pride Then all rich Inglandes continent beside.// Womens kind hartes mens teares cannot abide They least are angrye, when that most they chide./ (Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 117, f. 274rev) Printed collections of this kind of poetry in Latin and English testify to the taste for such verse.45 Moral versifying was also an activity encouraged in the schools. Sometimes pithy pieces of conventional wisdom were written on walls, windows, or chimneys,46 as was the case of the following unique piece in a Bodleian manuscript: A true friends love must like a Chimney bee, Warme in the winter of adversitye. (Bod. MS Malone 19, p. 100) A note in the right margin next to this reads “wrott one Mr/Dausons chimney/Oxford.” The same manuscript preserves a couplet and answer written originally written on a window: One wrote his name in a window whearfore he was thus reproved/ Hee’is a folle, and ever shall, Who writes his name uppon a wall.

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 285 Replye to the former. hee is a foole, & ever shall, Who takes a windowe, for a wall. (Bod. MS Malone 19, p. 103) This exchange is also found in Folger MS V.a.162, f. 59. All these pieces signal the strong tradition of moral and didactic verse that persisted even as more literarily sophisticated poetry was becoming dominant. They served the purpose of many similar acts of common placing that facilitated the incorporation of important and memorable texts into one’s mental furniture. On the religious side, in Matthew Day’s collection, several apparently unique poems celebrate the Christmas season. These include a piece on the Epiphany that incorporates a sketch of the Magi’s star and its two sets of beams. The beams isolate single words in the phrases that run left to right. Top to bottom, these words read: “Wee Have Seene His Starre In The East And Are Come To Worship Him” (see Figure 8.1): Upon The

Epiphanie Math: 2.2 Wee Gentiles _________________Wee that were without the Camp Of the first Covenant _________ Have at length found grace And we have _________________ Seene his bright & blessed Lamp Lighting us to ________________ His homely happy place Wher loe the _________________Starre of Jacob shines more cleare (Though darkned_____________ In the clouds of povertie) Then ever did _______________ The glorious Sunne Since from the ________________East he first did mount the skie: Hee’s a weake chilld And To mans insight dimme, Yet strength & knowledge Are his underlings, For kings & wisemen _________Come to worship him With presents rich, as _________ To the King of Kings Three come to _______________ Worship One in Trinitie yea more then that ____________Him selfe is allsoe Three. For hee’s a Preist, a Prophet & a King Frankincense (therefore) Myrrh & Gold they bring. (Folger MS V.a.160, p. 45) The minister who compiled this anthology probably composed this verse. Similarly, in a poem in this same manuscript on the theme of the circumcision of Christ, the first words of each line read in vertical order “They Shall Call His Name Emmanuell That is God With Us” (p. 44),

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Figure 8.1 Folger MS V.a.160, p. 45. By permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library.

the last letters of alternate lines spelling “JESUS.” Many other manu­ scripts contain substantial amounts of devotional and religious verse, much of it rare or unique: for example, Marmaduke Rawdon’s collection (BL MS Add. 18044), the religious commonplace book of Anna

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 287 Cromwell Williams (BL MS Harley 2311), the Cambridge academic Thomas Lenthall’s collection (BL MS Add. 34692), Alexander Colepepper’s collection of religious verse and prose (BL MS Tanner 118), and BL MS Harley 3357, which has the title “A Handfull of Celestial Flowers … composed by divers worthie & Learned Gentlem [en] Manuscrib’d by R[alph] Cr[ane].”

Songs Songs that somehow never made their way, with or without musical notation, into the manuscript or printed song collections form a seventh group. One of the notable features of Nicholas Burge’s large anthology of verse (Bod. MS Ash. 38) is the numbering of thirty-seven of its poems as songs. This reminds us of the traditional association of the lyric and music and of their slow disengagement during this period, largely be­ cause print culture separated texts from their performance setting (al­ though, of course, songbooks continued to be published during the period). Petrarch’s inclusion of “canzoni” in his Rime along with his sonnets, Wyatt’s foregrounding of the musical character of his verse (“My lute awake” etc.), the strong representation of songs and ballads in printed miscellanies, Sidney’s incorporation of eleven songs in his Astrophil and Stella, Donne’s two labeled “Songs” in his lyrical corpus all remind us of this association. As Mary Hobbs has observed, there were active musical circles in London in the mid-seventeenth century,47 but, in a culture of household musical performance, people also com­ monly memorized or even composed songs, then transcribed them later. One unique poem found in Nicholas Burge’s mid-seventeenth-century manuscript that is also part of a Rosenbach collection (Ros. MS 1083/16, p. 300) takes the persuasion to love dramatized earlier by Sidney in the eighth song from Astrophil and Stella and converts the lady’s initial re­ fusals into a succession of acts of consent to further and further intimacy:

gen[tleman] Ladye why doth Cares Torment you May not I your Greyf remove have I nothing will Content you with the sweet desires of love La[dy] Oh no, no Alas noe ge[ntleman] Bewty In a perfect In a perfect measure hath the love & lookes att all Can you deare then take noe pleasure to Commaund a hart In thralll La[dy] Oh no, no Alas no gen[tleman] what yf I desire the favoure

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript ^which^ your Lipps permitt me to Will you thincke ytt rude behaviour yf I take a kiss or two La[dy] Oh no, no Ahlas no [gentleman] yf Amazed with bewtyes wonder I presume your Brestes to touche or attempt a little under will you thinke I doe to much Lad Oh no, no Ahlas no [gentleman] Once more Onlye lett me try you for my hoppes are fully fedd yf to nought I should find by you would you Chyde me from your bedd La[dy] Oh no, no Ahlas no. finis (Bod. MS Ash. 38, p. 55)

Peter Calfe’s London collection includes an apparently unique song that obviously registers the influence of Donne’s verse: A Sonnet Let common beauties have the power to make one Love sicke for an hower, perhaps for one whole day or two, But so to Captivate a heart as it should never, never part none hath that Art but only you; Let meaner beauties have the skill by tempering hopes with feares, to kill, and by degrees a heart undoe. But with a sweet, yet Tyrant, Eye at once to bidd one looke and dye none hath that power but only you: faire wonder, to these Charming eyes A heart I faine would Sacrifice, Had I but ere a one in store, But having lost mine long before well may I sighe, wish, and adore but for my life can dye noe more. (BL MS Harley 6917, f. 38)

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 289 It is not surprising, given the social and performative character of both poems and songs in the culture of the period, that many of the items surviving in manuscripts would be song texts. One composite manu­ script, in fact, has a section headed “Songes. Ballads. Libells. &c.” (Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 26, f. 21). One of its poems, “A modest and temperate reproofe of the Schollars of Cambridge for sclandering Lawyers with the barbarous and gross title. Ignoramus,” has the note in the left margin that the song is to be sung “To the tune of Fortune my Foe” (f. 34), (incongruously) a melancholic song composed by John Dowland. Numerous political ballads are recorded in manuscript collections, especially in the Civil War era. For example, there is a ballad about the Parliamentary victory at Bradock Down in January 1643 and the Royalist victory following at Stratton on 16 May, “Did you not know, about three week agoe” (Bod. MS Ash. 36/37, f. 2).48 Another one of the many political songs and libels in the same manuscript is the apparently unique surviving copy of a libel, “A list of Cheshire Comanders under Sir Will: Brereton Rebell in cheife” (“Sir Billy quake”) (f. 78).49 One song is a valedictory piece addressed to a beloved (or spouse) by a Royalist about to go off to a battle in which his side in the conflict is outnumbered ten to one: Song Faire Fidelia now adue, I can no more Thy Deity adore Nor offer at thy shrine I serve one more divine And greater far than you Harke the trumpet calls away I must goe Least the foe Take the King & win the day March bravely on Charge them in the van Our course Gods is Though theire odds is Ten to one. Strive no more I must not yeeld Although thine eies A Kingdome might surprise Leave off these wanton tailes The high borne Prince of Wales Is mounted in the field

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Where all the loyall gentry flocke Though forlorne Nobly borne Of a neare decaying stocke Cleaveland’s boies be bold Never loose your hold He that loiters Is by traitours Bought & sould. One kisse more & then farwell Nay nay no more I prithy foole give ‘ore Why cloudst thou thus my beams I see by these extreames A woman’s heaven or hell Pray the King may have his owne That the Queene May be seene With her babes in England’s throne Rallie up our men One shall vanquish ten Victory we Come to try thee Oonce [sic] againe (BL MS Harley 3511, ff. 1v-2v)

A libelous ballad addressing the “Dissolution of the Parli[ament] Apr[il] 1653” (“Will you heare of strange things that you nere heard before” [BL MS Harley 3991, ff. 10v-11v]) criticizes Oliver Cromwell and pleads for a restoration of both king and parliament.50 This is followed two folios later by a long ballad about “St James Prisoners 1655” (“Though the governeing parte cannot finde in their hearte” [ff. 13v]), a rare poem found also in BL MS Harley 3889 (f. 7). This piece protests the im­ prisonment of fifteen Royalists. Numerous Royalist drinking songs survive in the manuscript collec­ tions from the period.51 There is a good example in another Harley manuscript: 1 Come fill us more wine or wee’l breake downe the signe for wee are the Joviall Compounders52 wee’l make your howse ring with healths to the King and Confusion unto his Confounders

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 291 2 And first on our knees heere’s a health who ere sees to King Charles were he choak’t that repines a pox on those traytors that looke to his waters53 they have nothing to doe with our wines 3 And next heere’s a Cup to to the Queene fill it up were it poyson I would make an end on’t may Charles and she meete to tread under feete both Praesbyter & Independent. 4 To the Prince and all others his sisters and brothers as low in Condition as high borne wee’l drink this and pray that shortly wee may see those that ^have^ wrong’d them at Tyberne 5 Heere are three bowles to all gallant soules who for the King did or will venture may they flourish when those that are his and their foes are all damn’d and ramnd down to the Center 6 Then heere is a glass to the roundhead let it pass attended with 2 or 3 Curses may the plague sent from hell fill their bellies as well as the Cavaliers Coyne did their purses 754 May the Canniballs of Pimme cat[ch] them up limme by limme or a feaver consume them to embers may the pox in their bed keep them till they bee dead or compound for the loss of their members (BL MS Harley 3991, ff. 26v-27) Like many other such songs, this one is unstinting in its hostility to and mockery of the other side in the English Civil Wars. The same

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manuscript has numerous other political and amorous songs, many in unique copies. One apparently unique piece, in the collection of Nicholas Burghe,55 which appears as the eleventh poem in a long run of various songs, laments the losses (of property and status) many fellow Royalists experienced: Come hether my Lads a while and let us the tyme beguile To drive fell sorrow hence Lettes spare for noe expence But since our lives are shorte on earth Lettes make them longer by our mirth Chor: {lettes drinke and sing here while wee may And thus enjoye our Holliday Thy wyfe, thy house, thy grownd must goe and nought bee founde Base wreetch to follow thee save the curst Cipresse tree Then lettes beare a merrye mynd and scorne to Care for whates behinde you see our yeares have winges our youth noe second springes That neither prayer nor vow keepe wrinckells from the brow whear ere wee goe age Dogges us still And wee must one, as fate Dothe will wee all must theither tend whear rich and poor doe blend in one their sacreed seed for soe hath Jove decreed That ere longe wee shall bee made A Jeast, a song, a sillie shade wee have seen sportes & Thes these returne; wee see the seas And horned moones to wayne And fill theire ebbes agayne But youthfull pleasures when we are dead Are like to a lost mayden-dead Then lett us all live free as the ayre, an lett us bee

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 293 Blithe, when wee are dead The whole worldes buried Then since life to us is shorte Lettes make it full up by our sporte Yet wines not in our head wee scorne to goe to bed Untill the fire less shine Then doth the kittlins eyne weel’e drincke and sing and still sett upp And spheare a bout this Joviall Cupp Cho:{Lettes drinck and sing here while wee may and thus enJoye our Hollyday finis (Bod. MS Ash. 38, p. 114) This piece celebrates drunkenness as the refuge of political and military losers.56 Some manuscripts have whole sections devoted to songs, carols, and hymns. Richard Shanne’s collection (BL MS Add. 38599) has a sepa­ rate group of poems headed “Certaine pretie songes hereafter follo­ winge drawn together by Richard Shanne 1611” (ff. 133–45). The pieces, many of them unique copies, some, no doubt of lost printed ballads, are accompanied by music.57 Some manuscripts contain songs that identify the tunes to which they were sung: for example, an ap­ parently unique copy of a song on London holiday sports in BL MS Harley 3911 entitled “Upon the Routing of the Cocks & beares / to the tune of I’le tell thee Dick” (ff. 8–9v). Other “songs,” however, may not have been intended to be sung. In a period in which lyrics were lit­ erarily moving away from their connection to music, the term “song” could designate verse that may or may not have been connected with music, as in the title of the verse anthology, BL MS Harley 2127, “Songs & Sonnetts.”58

Translations and Paraphrases In the eighth category, there are many apparently unique translations and paraphrases of poems, plays, and dramatic excerpts originally written in Latin, Greek, and modern European languages: by Virgil, Ovid, Martial, Juvenal, Seneca, Horace, Catullus, Lucan, Museus, Ausonius, and other classical writers; by such modern vernacular writers as Petrarch, Tasso, and du Bellay; and by neo-Latin writers such as Sir Thomas More,59 William Alabaster and the epigrammatist John Owen.60 Hunt. MS 198.2 has a run of five translations of Horace’s Odes (ff. 122v–24). In both grammar schools and the university, translation was habitual, and writers carried the practice into their later lives.61

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There are numerous examples of this practice—for example, in John Gell’s manuscript (Derbyshire Record Office MS D 258 34 26 1).62 In a British Library manuscript, there is a an apparently unique copy of a translation of a passage from Seneca’s Thyestes about the perils of living at court: Let him that listeth live at court In all the pomp and princely port That place affords of Princes grac’t And on the top of greatnes plac’t so slippery and so prone to fall And so precipitate with all: Let him that list, with vast desire Not reason-bounded swell to’ ^as^pire; Let quietnes and sweete content still satisfy my soule, not bent To high designes, but being retyred unto some place, of none admired, or envy’d, nor in the obvious eye of prying crittiques, or the dye of their rash doomes: so plac’t I shall Enjoy my peace & rest with all Free to my selfe, not under checke Of haughty seigniors at their becke Not crouching, not in cringing posture, Playing for gaine the slye imposture, But plac’t in quiet in mine owne, Of Great ones neither markt, nor knowne (BL MS Harley 3910, f. 78) Members of an ambitious, educated elite would have found this advice relevant to their lives. In a University of Leeds Brotherton manuscript, there is a translation of a Martial epigram preceded by prose that makes the poem relevant to a personal context: Sir I am sorry to be abused before acquainted, it is what I use not to doe and as unwillingly suftur [sic], were there no manners of your owne to be mended, you dwe [sic] so freely correct others! and fill blanke Almanackes with those that as litle desire your acquaintance as deserve your malice: have you so well gone through a deanery at home that you may become a catholicke censor for the university? I hope you have not found a science ^in^ physiognomie to read mens sinnes in their faces, or if you have, take a lookinge glasse for

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 295 your owne: must the guilt of a misplaced hour, or what I scorne to excuse (the seeinge of those I affect) lye so heavye upon a mans creditt that it must stifle it. That you may see some ruins of study I am desirous to bestow an hower in a moneth, though on you; further you shall not trouble me to be your owne plagiary and martyr, or leane to your selfe & if you want lett malice gett you a stomacke. In the meane time you may feed your selfe with censuringe the translation of this Epigram. Mart: lib. 5. ep: 29 Aulus were thy manners law Could we thence new ethicks draw Shouldst thou outgoe in pyety The pious burthen Curij were there a surfett or excesse Of Nerbays Drusoes quietnes Couldst thou outbid in honesty Marcyes or Mauricas equity Could thy tongue for Rhetoricke fitt Or Regalus or Paulus witt All these together cannot fill Repute, Mamercus must speake ill Those livid rusty teeth must eate Mens fame and credit, tis theire meate Though thou perhaps mayst thinke it soe And say tis envy Aulus. No Tis misery is his disease Whom nor himself nor any please. Jun: 19. 1622

your freind by way of advice Thom[as] Gorstelow.63 (University of Leeds Brotherton MS Lt q 11, no. 44)64

In both the prose letter and the translation, the author criticizes the addressee for his too strict censoriousness and moral hypocrisy. An apparently unique copy of a translation by Edward Dalby of New College, Oxford of Theoctritus’ Idyll xxi, (“One whom it seemes dame nature in a grudge”) is found in Bod. MS Ash. 47, ff. 117–18v. BL MS Add. 15228 has a collection of translations of Martial, Horace and other Latin writers. Sometimes the classical texts translated were obscene or bawdy—as in the case of the passage from Ausonius comically describing sexual intercourse: an English translation appears in Nicholas Burghe’s collection, “When they were entered and in bed were layne” (Bod. MS Ash. 38, p. 149). In a collection by the Yorkshire antiquary John

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Hopkinson, Bod. MS Don. d.8, there are apparently unique copies of translations of Ovid’s Amores 2.4 and 3.13 (“I will not seeke to excuse the faults of any” [ff. 45v–46] and “Seeing thou art faire, I barre not they false playeing” [f. 46r-v]). Many unique translations of Owen’s epigrams appear in Folger, MS V.a.345 as well as in other collections: the source texts were seen as making shrewd observations on the contemporary world and embodying wise advice. For example, Bod. MS Rawl. D. 929 has the originals and translations of two Owen epigrams, the second turning a quatrain into an eight-line dialog: Maritus et Machus Hanc ego mi uxorem duxi tulit alter honorem? Sic vos non vobis indificatis apes. Hos ego filiolos feci, tulit alter honorem, Sic vos non vobis indicifatie aves. A dialoge betwene the husband and sed whoremunger. The husband This wife I tooe my selfe did woe but another hath my hope deceved thus painefull bees make hony tooe and are at last thereof bereved. The whormunger, To make this child I did my best, An other douthe the honer wine Thus sylly sparrowes build the nest but Cuckowes oft lay eges therein (Bod. MS Rawl. D. 929, f. 24v) The author seems to have been James Gynne of Jesus College, Cambridge, who matriculated in the late 1570s.65 In a Cambridge manuscript, there is a translation of a Latin epigram that depicts a rape: De puella quae raptum finxit A young man on a maide chanc’d cast his eye And place seem’d t’usher opportunitie Th’unhappy wagg embrac’d her greedilie She kist & more then kist unwillinglie And frettinge angry thunders out lawes threat

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 297 She saith death’s all the ravisher shall gett But fiery youth urgeth his uncouth way o Through praireso & through feare forceth her stay prayers But praires & feare (she cryes) availeth not She kickes & bites & strikes to breake love’s knot Now love & anger strives for victory He furious saith female madnesse dost deny Now by this Sword quoth he with that he drew Unlesse you silently lie down adiew She fearefull modestly lies downe & saies Well, doe, y’ave urg’d me to’t, you’l have your wayes. (Cam. MS Add. 8684, f. 28v) This poem is Sir Thomas More’s Epigram 167, part of a collection that had long literary life. Numerous apparently unique translations of Latin epitaphs are re­ corded in manuscript collections. The writing of Latin epitaphs, of course, was routine, particularly in academic settings, but scribes also took it upon themselves to translate texts found at gravesites. For example, a Huntington Library manuscript that is, according to Peter Beal, “[a] folio miscellany of almost entirely Latin verse, entitled ‘a Boke of Verses Name Auru[m] è Stercore’ … written or compiled by Robert Talbot (1505/ 6–58), antiquary,”66 contains alternating Latin and English translations of epitaphs for Bridget Buttes, including the following unique poem: Dame Brygit late the faythfull wyfe of Thomas Butes Esquire Lyeth buryed heare wyth in this Tombe and yf thou do enquire What manner wight this woman was whiles lyfe her lymbes did feede: Behold while lyfe in her did last what wight she was indeede And yf thou search her Progenie: she sprange in gentle bloode Which lynyallye by due discent tyme out of mynde hath stoode. Her manners gave her husbande cawse to love and lyke his wyfe Whose fixed fayth was cheyned fast wyth lyncke of honest lyfe. Her bodie prudence, and her forme wyth gyft of mynde did Strive Her wisdome colde in gravitie a cheirefull looke contrive She might have lyved soo becauwse her vertuwe passed all Apte was she for the worlde but yet more apt for god by call Yet this suffise: Farewell my frende, deferre not howe to lyve Her this daye let, to the perhaps tomorowe daye may give. By Bernarde Gaster (Hunt. MS HM 8, B10v-C1)67 A late seventeenth-century Cambridge manuscript has an epitaph and translation concerning the martyr Walter Mill:

298

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript The Epitaph upon that Blessed Martyr Walter Mill at St Andrews in Scotland Non nostra inmpietas, aut actae crimina vitae Armarunt hostes in mea fata truces Sola fides Christi, saris signata libellis, Quae vitae causa est, & mihi causa nefis. in English thus. No impious acts, or Crimes my life had stain’d Could arm my Angry foes to stop my breath that faith alone in holy writ Fontain’d the source of life to others Caus’d my death. (Cam MS Add. 8460, p. 63 rev.)

Poetic bricolage A ninth category includes examples of poetic bricolage, poems put to­ gether from excerpts from received texts. For example, in Folger, MS V.a.345, a poem combines lines from songs 1, 2, 4, and 5 of William Browne’s Britannia’s Pastorals (1616): The powers above deny So faire a beuty should so quickly dy, Prayse her who wil, he stil shal be her debter, For art were fram’d, not nature made a better, So fayr a person to describe to men, Requires a curious pensil, not a pen. Nor ever beutyes like wit at such closes But in the kisses of a damask roses. Within the spatious orbe could no man finde A fayrer face matcht with a fayrer minde, Love thou above in endless bliss, whilst wee Admire all virtues in admiring thee. (Folger MS V.a.345, p. 169)68

[5]

[10]

Ros. MS 1083/16 takes portions of two Donne poems, “Farewell to Love” (lines 35–40) and “The Perfume” (lines 53–62), converting the first into a five-line poem entitled “Beauty” (p. 303) and the second into one entitled “One proving false” (pp. 303–4). As noted earlier in this study, BL MSS Sloane 1792 (f. 11r–v) and Add. 30982 (f. 52v) record a sampled version of a poem dubiously attributed to William Shakespeare in William Jaggard’s Passionate Pilgrim (1599 and 1612), “When that thine eye hath chose the dame.”69 Another sampled version

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 299 of the poem (lines 25–54) appears in Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 172, f. 2v, entitled “Coynesse discovered.”

Metapoetic Poems Tenth, and finally, there are apparently unique poems that either in­ troduce collections or in other ways comment on the poetic activities of authors and compilers. For example, one manuscript, probably intended as a gift to Lady Harflete (Bod. MS Firth e.4), opens with a poem ad­ dressed to her, beginning “Loe here a sett of paper-pilgrims sent / From Helicon, to pay an Homage-rent” (f. 1).70 Edward Dalby of New College, Oxford, wrote a metapoetic piece discussing his intentions in writing anagrammatic verse for two brothers, Henry and Robert Stapleton: Anagrams uppon the Names of Mr {Henry {Robert {Stapylton H’is purely constant Robertus Stapyltonus o lay trust uppon’s brest Henricus et {Robertus

{staphyltonus

just pure-constant brothers livers The Proem Excuse my sawcy Pen that thus hath brought your names in question t’was not that I thoght They greed not with your natures but to try If I could try some secret mistery In th’ indigested letters each one knowes That knowes you that your natures doe disclose whats intricatly couched in your names And your owne lives make true these Anagrams I onely rank’t the letters which before were out of order, there’s noe lesse nor more If of one title any name’s bereft you have my hand pray burne it for the theft one letters chang’d indeed but I appeale To th’ proverbe he that changes doth not steale Reade then and when y’have gras’t it with your eyes Burne it twas destind For your sacrifice.

300

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Henricus Stapylton H’is purely constant (Bod. MS Ash. 47, f. 121v)

Another anonymous poet metapoetically reflected on the task of writing an elegy for the loss of a friend, “Greife makes a poet, I which nere made verse” (Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 328, f. 63v). A rare copy of a poem in the Wyatt family papers71 is preoccupied with the process and context of writing verse Since jarring cares, not yet my rusticke course Of life hold concord with sweet musike lawes, Whose gentler notes arise from calmer sourse. Some honest Genius tell me what’s the cause, That what I write or carelesly rehearse, Falles in the member of a measur’d verse. It cannot from my bodies temper flow, For that could never learne to tread in tone, Nor beate the rushes with alternate toe, Nor fashionate it selfe as others done. To catch beholders eies with gracefull port, As farre from courtlines as from the court. Nor am I wont to invocate a Muse, To celebrate light toyes with lasting fame, Nor speake I ought but truth, no fictions use, Nor am ambitious of a Poets name. Nor dare I thinke those maidens are so bold To prostitute themselves and come uncal’d. Is it because my soule doth sympathize The restlesse motion of the turning spheares; Or that Apollo on the spangled skies, Crown’d with a garland of chast Daphnies haires Raign’d at my birth, or Neptune to appease Anon it harped to the dancing seas. Or that I am extract of Wiats bloud, Which erst in happy numbers did abound, Whilst Fortune with desert at friendship stood, Am their sweet harmony with honour crown’d. And yet on Medwaies silver streames do dwell Swannes, that if Fortune smil’d, could sing as well.

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 301 Or that my Phoenix turn’d to fruitles ashes From the hot odours of her spicy nest Sends forth a flame, whose hott inspiring flashes Illuminates my braine, or warmes my breast. If none of these whence should this humour move, For without doubt I never was in love. C. A. (BL MS Add, 62135. ff. 344v–45) The poem is found in a collection of Wyatt family papers, which has separate bifolia and quires of different sizes, in a section of the manu­ script (ff. 332–58) the British Library catalog describes as a “Notebook of poems by Sir Francis Wyatt.”72 The writer was especially selfconscious about using verse as a medium of communication. Daniel Leare’s manuscript collection, includes a poem, titled “on the Vaulting house” (brothel), in which the sexually adventuring studentnarrator self-consciously addresses a readership of friends as he narrates his departure from the woman with whom he has spent the night and to whom he has promised secrecy. The last six lines of the piece relate the subject of secrecy in love to the act of publicizing the relationship through circulating a manuscript text: I neede not tell you the forme of taking leave for tis a mistery you may conceave. And to preserve the credit of us both Ile keepe it close, because I made an oath Therefore in silence for my frinds deliting I will not speake but publish it in writing. (BL MS Add. 30982, f. 89r–v) The speaker alleges that restricted manuscript publication does not constitute blabbing. Many early modern English texts contain meta­ poetic signals about their status as personal and/or literary commu­ nications, but often manuscript texts exhibit awareness about their functions within the particular system of transmission and circulation of which they were a part.

Conclusion Apparently unique manuscript copies of poems survive by such canonical figures as Sir Edward Dyer, Sir Walter Ralegh, Queen Elizabeth, and even of the later-published Robert Herrick, but, for the most part, the rare or unique poems we find in manuscripts from the period are anonymous,73 subscribed by initials or abbreviated names, or are by noncanonical named writers who have had little notice: for example, John Grange, Henry

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Blount, William and Henry Skipwith, Nicholas Burghe, Robert Codrington, Robert Lapworth, Dorothy Shirley, John Ramsey, Thomas Wenman, and Peter Calfe, some of whom are the compilers of the col­ lections in which their work appears. Feminist scholars over the past halfcentury have discovered the work of early modern women poets previously ignored in literary history.74 It is time to widen the recovery effort, espe­ cially to include the mass of anonymous writing of the period. This chapter cites only a few of these pieces from a small selection of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century manuscript poetical collections. As researchers in­ vestigate the holdings of archives other than the major ones (local record offices, for example) and as the indexing of first lines of poetry from the period develops further, we can identify which pieces are truly unique or rare, then incorporate them into our understanding of the varied literary activities in early modern England. In this broader field of verse compo­ sition, poetry was the prerogative of literate people and part of everyday life. We need to understand this rare or unique verse in the framework not of traditional literary history but of a social history of writing.

Notes 1 I discuss BL MS Harley 7392 in “Humphrey Coningsby and the Personal Anthologizing of Verse in Elizabethan England,” in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, IV: Papers of the Renaissance English Text Society 2002–2006, ed. Michael Denbo (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Renaissance English Text Society, 2008), 71–102. Coningsby’s anthology has been analyzed and discussed in Jessica Edmondes (ed.), Elizabethan Poetry in Manuscript: And Edition of British Library Harley MS 7392(2) (Toronoto: ITER Press for the Renaissance English Text Society, 2021). I present the texts of seven apparently unique poems among the twenty-seven in the main section of Ann Cornwallis’s miscellany in Chapter 2. See also Chapter 3 and 9, which call attention to rare or unique poems in (respectively) Folger MS V.a.345 and BL MS Sloane 1446. 2 Angus Vine, “Search and Retrieval in Seventeenth-Century Manuscripts,” HLQ 80.2 (Summer 2017): 325–43, examines the way the compiler of Folger, MS V.a.399 laid out generic and other categories for the prose and verse he collected. Similarly, Cam. MS Add. 9221 has an index at the end, classifying its contents by genre or topic as “1 Carmina Sententiae Proverbia, 2 Facetiae, 3 De Rapina et Homicidio. 4 Amorosi, 6 Monuments funeralls burialls, 7 De Anima et Corpore, 8 Emblemata et Simbola, 9 De Papistes, 10 Epigrammata, 11 De otioso, 12 Historia, 13 Anagramatae Enigmae, 14 Epitaphia, 15 Avaritia, 16 Observatione Scriptura.” A number of other manuscripts arranged their poetic contents generically. Bod. MS Don. d.58, for example, has sections for “Elegies, Exequies, Epitaphs, Epigrams, Son [nets],” “Satires and other Poems,” and “Funeral Exequies Elegies and Epitaphes”; Folger, MS V.a.103 has separate sections for “Epitaphs Laudatory,” “Epitaphs Merry and Satyrical,” “Love Sonnets,” “Panegyrics,” “Satyres,” and “Miscellanea.” 3 See, for example, William Camden, Remaines, Concerning Britaine (1623), Wits Recreations (1640), and Sportive Wit (1656).

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 303 4 I discuss these in “Humphrey Coningsby and the Personal Anthologizing of Verse,” 80–81. 5 The OED defines “sir-reverence” as “human excrement”; OED, s.v. “sirreverence,” n. 2a, last modified 1911. 6 See, for example, ESL; Steven W. May and Alan Bryson, Verse Libel in Renaissance England and Scotland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Andrew McRae, Literature, Satire and the Early Stuart State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and “Erotic Writing in Manuscript Culture,” in Ian Frederick Moulton, Before Pornography: Erotic Writing in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 35–69. 7 Both poems are anonymous in Challoner Chute’s manuscript (BL MS Add. 33998). Texts of these long poems are reproduced in two appendices to chapter 3. 8 The is reproduced in ESL, A16. 9 See, also, the transcription of this poem in The Burley Manuscript, ed. Peter Redford (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), 311–12. 10 See ODNB “Wentworth, Thomas, first earl of Strafford (1593–1641),” by Ronald G. Asch, last modified October 2009, doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/29056 (accessed 19 April 2020). 11 Other poems related to Strafford’s fall include the spurious Verses Lately written by Thomas, Earle of Strafford (London, 1641) as well as the self-justifying The Earle of Strafford His Ellegiack Poem, […] pen’d […] a little before his Death (1641); Sir John Denham’s “Great Strafford, worthy of that name,” which is found in many manuscript and print copies https://firstlines.folger.edu/advancedSearch.php?val1=Great+Strafford& col1=firstline#results (accessed 19 April 2020); the rare anti-Parliament poem “Here without Law condemned Strafford lies” (Folger MS E.a.6, f. 6v and Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 246, f. 24v); and the admonitory (antiStrafford) poem, Great Straffords Farewell to the World (1641). 12 See Beal https://celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/folger-v-a-100.html (accessed 14 May 2020). 13 The OED defines the first meaning of this word as “To provide (a horse) with horseshoes which have been adapted to provide extra traction in frosty conditions, esp. with frost-nails or calkins; also in extended use. Also (later chiefly): to adapt (a horseshoe) in this way.” 14 See the description of NLW MS 5390D in CELM https://celm-ms.org.uk/ repositories/national-library-of-wales.html (accessed 17 April 2020). 15 BL MS Add. 62135, f. 277. The text of this poem is also reproduced in Arthur F. Marotti and Marcelle Freiman, “The English Sonnet in Manuscript, Print and Mass Media,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Sonnet, ed. A. D. Cousins and Peter Howarth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 72. Its author seems to have been George Wyatt (1554–1624) and it is found in the loose “Wyatt Papers.” The Margaret of the poem may have been George Wyatt’s daughter-in-law, Sir Francis Wyatt’s wife. See ODNB https://doi.org/ 10.1093/ref:odnb/30102 (accessed 4 July 2020). 16 Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses 1500–1714, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1891) identifies Giles Hayward as the son of Francis Hayward, and has him matriculating at Magdalen College on 8 May 1635 at the age of 18. He received his B.A. on 20 February 1635/36 https://www.british-history.ac.uk/alumni-oxon/1500–1714/pp679–705 (accessed 18 April 2020). 17 Other suicide poems include the famous one by Sir George Radney, who had unrequited love for Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford, “What shall I do

304

18 19 20

21

22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30

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that am undone” (Folger MS V.a.345, p. 61 and other manuscripts) and Henry Arscall’s “Haste night into thy center, are thy wings” (Bod. MS Malone 21, f. 47 and other manuscripts). His two-line epigram, “on a wencher” (“Who loves a glasse without a G. / Take L. away the rest is he” (p. 78) is found in two other manuscripts and four printed texts. The first three lines of this stanza echo lines and images from the first sonnet of Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti. See Beal https://celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/bodleian-rawlinson-200.html (accessed 14 May 2020), who dates the collection c.1648–60. The Cambridge authors in this collection include Henry Proby, Charles Mason, Robert Creswell, Samson Briggs, Clement Paman, Matthew Scrivener, and Richard West. This politically Royalist collection has both contemporary verse and pieces by earlier university poets. Kevin De Ornellas, The Horse in Early Modern England (Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014), chapter 3, dis­ cusses Banks and his performing horse as a popular sensation in late Elizabethan and Jacobean England. I am unable to identify this particular book. J. A. W. Bennett and H. R. Trevor-Roper (eds.), The Poems of Richard Corbett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 75. See Alec Ryrie’s ODNB biography of Wisdom: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29785 (accessed 13 March 2020). See the discussion of this collection in Chapter 6. The Folger Shakespeare Library provenance folder identifies as the ownercompiler of this manuscript Matthew Day (1574–1661), who served as al­ derman and mayor of Windsor. It is possible, however, that his son, Matthew Day (1611–1663) was the one responsible for the collection. From 1630–37, he was at King’s College, Cambridge, as was Thomas Randolph, some of whose poems appear in this manuscript. See ODNB, s.v. “Day, Matthew (bap. 1611, d. 1663),” by Hugh de Quehen, last modified January 2008, https://doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/7370 (accessed 20 March 2020). These are: “I indear’er. Ni reri, adi. / Dira reni. Inde re ira/I nere dira. Ride in are. Ni e re dira.” See Redford, Burley Manuscript, 272. See Redford, Burley Manuscript, 286–87. “MacFlecknoe,” in The Poems and Fables of John Dryden, ed. James Kinsley (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 243, ll. 205–8. For Briggs, see the online version of John Venn and John Archibald Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922–53) http://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2018.pl?sur=Briggs&suro=w& fir=&firo=c&cit=&cito=c&c=all&z=all&tex=&sye=1630&eye=1660& col=all&maxcount=50 (accessed 17 April 2020) and for Ollivier, https:// books.google.com/books?id=qj5FAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA314&lpg= PA314&dq=Isaac+Ollivier+Cambridge&source=bl&ots=Kk4Mty4EBV& sig=ACfU3U03Vu6W662kFjSwzV1pW_2uB4M4Zw&hl=en&sa=X&ved =2ahUKEwjasJCLkvDoAhXFHc0KHeO6BzAQ6AEwAnoECAoQNQ#v= onepage&q=Isaac%20Ollivier%20Cambridge&f=false (accessed 17 April 2020). Ollivier and Briggs were among the Cambridge poets whose work is found in Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 147. The Folger Index lists some nineteen poems by Briggs in various manuscripts https://firstlines.folger.edu/advancedSearch.php?val1=Briggs&col1=au#results (accessed 17 April 2020). He was a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge from 1633 to1643 http://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search-2018.pl?sur=Briggs&

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34 35

36 37

38

suro=w&fir=&firo=c&cit=&cito=c&c=all&z=all&tex=&sye=1630&eye= 1660&col=all&maxcount=50 (accessed 17 April 2010). The Folger Index lists nine poems by Ollivier in three different manuscripts: https://firstlines.folger.edu/advancedSearch.php?val1=Ollivier&col1=au# results (accessed 17 April 2020). This manuscript has Emmanuel College, Cambridge connections and con­ tains such Cambridge writers as Henry Proby, Charles Mason, Robert Creswell, Clement Pamon, Matthew Scrivener, and Richard West. It is heavily Royalist in its orientation and has material from the 1650s, but also reproduces early university verse, including some Christ Church, Oxford poetry. See the description of the manuscript in CELMhttps://celm-ms.org. uk/repositories/bodleian-rawlinson-100.html (accessed 18 April 2020) and in Falconer Madan, A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897), 4.339–40. See, ODNB, s.v. “Willis, Thomas (1621–1675),” by Robert A. Martensen, last modified October 2007, doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/29587 (accessed 2 February 2014). Newes from the Dead. Or A True And Exact Narration of the miraculous deliverance of Anne Greene, Who being Executed at Oxford Decemb. 14. 1650. afterwards revived; and by the care of certain Physitians there, is now perfectly recovered (Oxford, 1651). The work’s first edition has thirty-three poems, the second (also 1651) has fifty-one. See James Sutherland, “Anne Greene and the Oxford Poets,” in The Augustan Milieu: Essays Presented to Louis A. Landa ed. Henry Knight Miller et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 1–17. The other pamphlets are: Anon., A Declaration from Oxford (London, 1651) and W. Burdet, A Wonder of Wonders (London, 1651). In her note in the Folger provenance folder on this manuscript, Laetitia Yeandle notes that Mott was at Cambridge at the time of the fire. This lyric appears with the title “A watch sent back to a gentlewoman” in three printed volumes: The Academy of Complements (1640) and Wits Recreations (1641 and 1645). In several of the thirty-one manuscripts in which it appears, the recipient is specified as “Mistris Elizabeth King.” See the Folger Index https://firstlines.folger.edu/advancedSearch.php?val1=Go +and+count&col1=firstline#results (accessed 20 March 2020). See, for example, Queen Elizabeth’s famous message scratched on the window of the house at Woodstock in which she was confined late in Queen Mary’s reign: Much suspected by me, Nothing proved can be, Quoth Elizabeth prisoner.

39 40 41 42 43

See the text of this poem and of the poem Elizabeth wrote on a shutter in charcoal in Queen Elizabeth I, Selected Works, ed. Steven W. May (New York; Washington Square Press, 2004), 4. ESL, Oii14. One of these other poems, “The Duke is dead and we are ridd of strife” (ff. 5v-6v) is reproduced in ESL, Pii6. BL MS Harley 6917, f. 41; the text of this poem is reproduced in Chapter 1. Lines 7–12 of this poem reproduce lines from Ralegh’s original. This subscription is in another hand and another ink. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses https://www.british-history.ac.uk/alumni-oxon/1500–1714/ pp1297–1322 (accessed 26 April 2020) lists two students named “Anthony St. Leger” in the period. The first, from Kent, matriculated at Queen’s

306

44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52

53 54 55

56

57 58 59

60 61

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript

College in 1606 at the age of fifteen, was a student of Gray’s Inn in 1610, and died in 1626. The second (and more likely candidate), also from Kent, ma­ triculated at St. John’s College in 1621, was a student at Gray’s Inn in 1622, was knighted in July of 1642, and died in 1661. I owe the identification of this hand to Steven W. May (personal communication). See, for example, the four editions of The Preceptes of Cato published be­ tween 1550 and 1577. For a study of such texts and their contexts, see Juliet Fleming, Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts (Aldershot, U.K.: Scolar Press, 1992), 93–95 and passim. Information derived from the Folger Index https://firstlines.folger.edu/ advancedSearch.php?val1=Did+you+not+know&col1=firstline#results (ac­ cessed 20 March 2020). This is not found in ESL. This is followed two folios later by a long ballad about “St James Prisoners 1655” (“Though the governeing parte cannot finde in their hearte” [ff. 13v]), a piece found also in BL MS Harley 3889 (f. 7). This piece protests the im­ prisonment, with the ability to invoke “habeas corpus,” of a series of Royalists who are named in the poem. See Lois Potter, Secret Rites and Secret Writing: Royalist Literature, 1641–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 113–55. “Compounders” were Royalists on the losing side in the English Civil War and had to come to terms with the parliamentary Committee for Compounding in order to preserve their estates. See Rachel Weil, “Thinking about Allegiance in the English Civil War,” History Workshop Journal 61 (2006): 183–91. It appears that a line designed to rhyme with this one was omitted by the scribe or by someone else in the line of transmission. This seventh stanza is inserted in the right margin. Captain Nicholas Burghe, who fought in the Civil Wars, was a friend of Elias Ashmole and became one of the “Poor Knights of Windsor”: information about him is available at https://www.stgeorges-windsor.org/image_of_the_ month/captain-nicholas-burgh/ (accessed 12 March 2015). Rare or unique copies of epithalamic and funerary songs are also preserved in manuscript collections such as Burghe’s. See, for example, “An Nuptiall songe applyed to the first dayes waking and hastening the Bride and groome to the Church” (p. 108) and the other marital poems in the sequence, and “A Funerall Songe” (“Rest Quiettly in thy Longe Latest sleepe” [p. 111]). See Hyder E. Rollins, “Ballads from Additional MS 38,599,” PMLA 38.1 (1923): 133–52. Often, in seventeenth-century collections, the term “sonnet” means “song.” Ann Coiro, Robert Herrick’s Hesperides and the Epigram Book Tradition (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 62, notes that More’s epigrams (first published in 1516) “were held up to schoolboys for emulation … And since More’s epigrams mix pious sentences with scurrilous jokes, they were mined not only by schoolmasters but by jestbook collectors.” BL MS Sloane 1489, for example, has a run of poems on f. 27 labeled “Owens Epigr.” As pointed out by Christopher Burlinson, “Richard Corbett and William Strode: Chaplaincy and Verse in Early Seventeenth-Century Oxford,” in Chaplains in Early Modern England: Patronage, Literature and Religion, ed. Hugh Adlington et al. (Manchester, U.K: Manchester University Press,

Rare or Unique Poems in Early Modern 307

62 63

64

65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72

73

74

2013), 144–45, university students continued the practice learned in grammar school of doing English-to-Latin and Latin-to-English translations of poems. This manuscript is discussed in Arthur F. Marotti and Steven W. May, “A New Manuscript Copy of a Poem by Queen Elizabeth: Texts and Contexts,” ELR 47.1 (2017): 1–20. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses https://www.british-history.ac.uk/alumni-oxon/ 1500–1714/pp569–599 (accessed 18 April 2020) identifies Gorstelow as a Corpus Christi College, Oxford member who received his B.A. in 1616, his M.A. in 1620, and his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1628. He would have written the poem, then, after receiving his Master’s degree and while he was a divinity student. This manuscript is a collection of disbound papers, mostly in folio, so these items could have been sent as a letter: see CELM https://celm-ms.org.uk/ repositories/leeds-university-library-brotherton-collection.html#leeds-universitylibrary-brotherton-collection_id358864 (accessed 19 April 2020). See the Folger Index https://firstlines.folger.edu/detail.php?id=82918 (ac­ cessed 20 March 2020). CELM https://celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/huntington-f.html (accessed 20 April 2020). This is a rare example of a signed manuscript. Ll. 1–2 are from song 1 of William Browne’s Britannia’s Pastorals; ll. 3–4 from song 4; ll. 5–6, 7–8, 11–12 from song 5; ll. 9–10 from song 2. This piece is also found in Yale MS b.356, p. 257. This poem is reproduced in Arthur F. Marotti and Laura Estill, “Manuscript Circulation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare, ed. Arthur F. Kinney (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 55. The text of this poem is reproduced in Arthur F. Marotti, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), 53–54. Beal in CELM identifies the compiler of this manuscript as Sir Francis Wyatt, who was the great-grandson of the poet and the grandson of the executed Marian rebel, Sir Thomas Wyatt Jr. See the British Library’s catalogue http://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/ libweb/action/display.do?tabs=detailsTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc= IAMS040–001962460&indx=1&recIds=IAMS040–001962460&recIdxs=0& elementId=0&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=& dscnt=2&scp.scps=scope%3A%28BL%29&frbg=&tab=local&dstmp= 1593885583700&srt=rank&mode=Basic&dum=true&fromLogin=true&vl (freeText0)=Additional%20MS%2062135&vid=IAMS_VU2 (accessed 4 July 2020). For a useful discussion of the conventions of anonymity in manuscript poe­ tical collections, see Marcy L. North, The Anonymous Renaissance: Cultures of Discretion in Tudor-Stuart England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 159–210. See, for example, the pieces included in Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Poetry, ed. Jill Seal Millman and Gilliam Wright (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005); and Early Modern Women Poets: An Anthology, ed. Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

9

Rare or Unique Poems in British Library MS Sloane 1446

As noted in the previous chapters, many manuscript collections of verse surviving from the early modern period contain rare or unique poems. This chapter examines one of these documents, BL MS Sloane 1446, setting such verse in the larger context of a 180-poem anthology.1 Much of the poetry in this collection, composed mainly in the second and third decades of the century, originated in the university, particularly, like so many other anthologies, at Christ Church, Oxford. The first item in Sloane 1446 is that much-transcribed long poem by the Christ Church poet Richard Corbett, “Iter Boreale” (ff. 2-9v),2 and the collection contains eight other poems by him, twenty-four by William Strode, thirteen by Henry King, and pieces by such other Christ Church poets as Jeramiel Terrent, Brian Duppa, James Smith, and George Morley. It has also some verse by Cambridge poets, including six pieces by Robert Herrick, among them a poem not found in Hesperides (1648), “On a cherry stone sent to weare in his Mistess eare, a deaths head on the one side & her face on the other” (ff. 62v-63), ascribed here to “Rog: Hericke.” It contains also the two much-copied Herrick poems, “The welcome to sack” (ff. 18v–19v) and “The farewell to sack” (ff. 17v-18);3 a rare copy of John Milton’s poem on the death of the Catholic Countess of Winchester (“This rich marble cloth doth inter” [ff. 37v–38v]); and two poems by Thomas Randolph (“Sweet Lesbia’s voice I chanc’d to heere” [ff. 63v–64v] and “Arithmetic nine digits and no more” [f. 91]). The last poems were possibly transcribed when they circulated in London where, after leaving the university, the poet functioned as one of Ben Jonson’s poetic disciples. Relating the collection to a family of manuscripts containing the poetry of Henry King, Mary Hobbs believes the compilation was put together at the Inns of Court, and she points out connections with other Inns-of-Court collections.4 It has some poems that circulated in the literary environment of the Inns by such authors as Thomas Carew (formerly of Merton College, Oxford),5 John Grange, Henry Blount, Robert Ellice, John Hoskins, John Vaughan, and William Browne, and some pieces by or misattributed to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Sir Benjamin Rudyerd.6 Like other collections combining texts circulating at the

Rare or Unique Poems in British Library 309 university and in London, Sloane 1446 incorporates older pieces—for example, poems by Edmund Spenser, Sir John Harington, Sir Henry Wotton, Sir John Davies, Chidiock Tichborne, and Sir Walter Ralegh. Like many other manuscript compilations from the period, Sloane 1446 contains some twenty-eight apparently unique copies of poems. Mostly anonymous (though some may have been written by the compiler himself), they illustrate various poetic games and practices characteristic of the period, especially in the manuscript medium: poetic imitations, answerpoems or poems on a set theme, occasional verse for friends or lovers, and satiric or politically dangerous pieces. Such poems reveal readers’ and collectors’ own participation in poetic creation and the immersion of poetry in the private and social environments in which it circulated.

Sonnets in the Collection Unusually for a seventeenth-century manuscript poetry anthology, Sloane 1446 contains a relatively large number of sonnets. It reproduces, for example, a textually variant, unnumbered, and untitled version of the eighth sonnet from Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti: More then most faire full of that liveinge fire kindled above the highe Creator neere noy eyes but joyes, with whome all powers Conspire that in this world may else bee counted deare. Throughe your cleere beames doth not the blinded guest [5] shoote out his darts to base affections wound But Angells come to leade fraile mindes to rest in chast desires on heavenlie beauties bounde You hold my thoughtes you fashion mee within you tie my tongue and force my hart to speake [10] you calme the stormes when passiones doe begin stronge throughe your power but through your vertue weake Love is not knowne where your light shineth ever well is hee borne that may behold you ever.7 (f. 43) Variants from the 1595 edition (1595): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

that] the 1595 the highe Creator] unto the maker 1595 with whome] in which 1595 in this] to the 1595; may] naught 1595 cleere] bright 1595 beauties] beauty 1595 hold] frame 1595; you] and 1595

310 8. 9. 10. 11.

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript tie] stop 1595; force] teach 1595 stormes when] storm that 1595; doe] did 1595 power] cause 1595; through] by 1595 Love] Dark 1595; not knowne] the world 1595; shineth ever] shined never 1595

Eighteen textual variants in a fourteen-line poem are somewhat unusual. Laurence Cummings has speculated that these were the result of both scribal error and authorial revision.8 In any case, this piece is stylistically anachronistic in a seventeenth-century collection.9 Some other similar love sonnets in Sloane 1446 are among the poems that appear to be unique in this collection, the first of which, two poems before Spenser’s sonnet, is untitled: Her darlinge deare (the mothers tender care) laide feaver sicke, the mother by doth sitt hearinge him aske such thinges as noysome are And such (shee knowes) as would mainteine his fitt But pittie blinde (not safelie takeing heede) by kinde prickt forth her wailinge childe to please at his owne will she gives him leave to feede leaveing his plaint but strengtheninge his disease Right so fare I in sicknes of my thought my passions plainte, whoe seeke to have of you those outward sweetes, which haveing inly wrought Increase my paines that fancie did pursue In this strange plight both child & thought doe cry please mee alive and after lett mee die. (f. 42v) The metaphor of a mother tending and breastfeeding a sick child is quite unusual in a love sonnet, especially given the rarity of breastfeeding among the upper classes in early modern England. It is curious, and culturally revealing, that the speaker thinks that breastfeeding a crying child would make him sicker. The next sonnet in the manuscript uses medical bloodletting as a metaphor: A modest Suitor Ile binde my hands to fasten just desire my tongue shall feare to wrong my Mistris eares And if to gaze on her my eies aspire Ile wash them forth with my resplendent teares If my proude hands dare once offend my love

Rare or Unique Poems in British Library 311 Or make an offer of a guiltie touch I’le cutt the veines whereon my fingers move and bleed my lust, my love to you is such If any parte or motion of my sence transgress the limitts of my loves direction my bodys death shall ransome that offence my soul’s engaged soe deepe to her perfection Thus whilst I keepe my humble thoughts at schoole scorneinge shee saide, faith tis an honest foole. (f. 44v) The clash between the physical manifestations of desire and the social constraints under which the lover struggles leaves him emotionally and socially abject, though the mistress acknowledges the truth of what he expresses. The next unique sonnet in the manuscript (in seven couplets) is a more conventional love complaint: A hard Mistress the sweter enjoyd Doe I not see the fairest pictures made of hardest marble, that they should not fade by all consuming tyme, but still should keepe awake the memory of those that sleepe? why doe I then her hardenes discommend for that she will not to my wishes bende at smale assaults, since noe smale paine can get what thing soever at high price is sett nor ought so crewell hard but that delay can soften, making Cruelty decay so doe I hope her hard hart to allure to pitty: and that constant shele endure only in getting her my paines the greater but in enjoying her my joyes compleater. (f. 79) Such poems seem like a throwback to a poetic style of Elizabethan amorousness. They do not belong to the esthetic or social contexts of the typical contemporary poetical anthologies assembled at the university or in London. And they certainly contrast stylistically with some of this collection’s other verse, particularly poems that reflect the influence of the poetry of John Donne and Ben Jonson on later writers.

312

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript

Poems Influenced by the Poetry of Donne Although Sloane 1446 does not contain any poems by Donne himself, it does register that poet’s influence by means of the manuscripts containing his poetry that were widely circulated before the appearance of the first edition of his verse in 1633, a date probably too late to affect the contents of Sloane 1446. There is a group of three poems in this anthology on the subject of parting, one of Donne’s favorite topics. The first and third pieces are apparently unique copies, while the second is found only in three other manuscripts: Upon parting with a deere freind As soules from boddyes parte so parte wee two what neede death a disease when love can doe the selfe same Act asswell? A parting sowle freind as soone, and surely gives the life it’s ende. Would wee could joyne our feares as is our greefe then single death might double our releefe One stroake might finish both, where now each fate Is but of force by sence of others state Let us like Consort voyces make our moanes ende at one instant, though, in different toanes. (f. 75) Another Though envious fortune which could neere have while of yet to grace me with one pleasing smile but ever frown’d now (to augment my greefe) barrs me thy sight, my refuge and releefe Yet th’ast my hart (my deere) in stead of me and as it lyves so shall it dye with thee though I must parte, and parting be a paine keepe thou my hart till I returne againe so that in parte I but departe from thee thou hast my hart the rest remaynes with me which rest smale rest shall finde, till having run their wonted course they ende where they begunn What more remaynes? Best thoughts shall thee attend my love in thee begun, in thee shall end. (f. 75)10 Another And are they goinge? o peace, or else say noe the weather stormes because they should not goe

Rare or Unique Poems in British Library 313 or rather weepes in showers of sobbing teares distilling mournefull ditties in myne eares the wyndes by Eolus their kings Comande are broken loose: as meaning to withstand This Jorney; th’ayre trumps out in thunder threats materiall cause of some ensuing fretts all things went well the season held up faire the wyndes were calme pleasant the summener ayre till this was wing’d: oh most unhappy mee each thing remaines from wheare it wont to be Now may my hartie wish take without blame what winde and weather would; I will the same. and yet methincks a dolefull sound I heare as shrill as fate rebuzzing in myne eare all this can doe noe good: tis thus decreed come what come will or can they must proceed Is it soe? then Ile tune my plesant stringe unto a noate which I nere ment to singe yet now I can’t; in seeking for a theame my passions burst into a sadd extreame Must they goe? Alas happy mirth enthrone each art of theirs, whil’st I lament: They’r gon. (f. 75r-v) These poems are grouped thematically, or by the (sub)genre of the valediction or propempticon. The first lyric begins with the same metaphor found at the start of Donne’s “A Valediction: forbidding mourning,” that of the soul’s departing the body in the breath of the dying person. The “freind” mentioned in the third line may be either a lover or a samesex friend in the more common meaning of the term, in which case this piece does not exactly follow Donne’s valedictory models. The second piece, in seven couplets, reproduces the sonnet structure of three quatrains and a couplet (signaled by the words “Though,” “Yet,” “so” and a couplet-conclusion). Donne avoided the sonnet in his amorous verse, but, of course, used in some of his early epistolary pieces to male friends and in his devotional verse. This poem is addressed to a mistress, employs the Petrarchan exchange-of-hearts motif Donne uses in love elegy, “His Picture,” and echoes the conclusion of “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” in the lover’s saying his return will make him end where he “begunn.” The third poem refers to a different situation, that of more than one person leaving on a hazardous journey, and the (ungendered) speaker or lyric singer is the one left behind—in the position, that is, of the woman in the usual valedictory poem. Sloane 1446 also has an apparently unique poem referring to the love token Donne foregrounds in “The Relique,” the hair bracelet:

314

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Upon a Gentlewomans twisted hairy braceletts Amorous manacles, Loves twisted ginneo secreet gyveso are hid herein Intangled youth beware th’art gon If but once thou pull [sic] theese on The Crewell faire, betwixt love and disdaine will laugh to see thee in this Chayne. Not Vulcans steely nett but Venus Lockes fetterd Mars i’th Lovers stocks, Beware this downy Nett, fond youth beware Least thou be piniond with a hare (f. 81)

o o

snare fetters

This is followed by another apparently unique answer poem: The Retraction Put them on enriched lover none can give thee such an other No though they spano them from the Fleece of gold, or from the swarms, that greece on her silver Rivers beares they were not equall to theese ha^i^res, Noe nor Idaes wolly leaves nor the Persian silken sleaves nor the fleecey scuttso of Cunneyo nor Love can yeild thee such nor money Put them on enriched Lover none can give thee such another. (f. 81)

o

spun

o

erect tail orabbit

In a collection that thematically groups many poems and that includes many other examples of answer poetry, this last lyric follows the compiler’s usual practice. It is somewhat surprising, given the popularity of Donne’s verse in Christ Church collections, that this compilation does not include any of his poems.

Jonson and Jonsonian Verse in the Collection Sloane 1446 contains some poems by Ben Jonson, including the songs “Drinke to mee Coelia with thine eies” (f. 54v)11 and “Come with our voices lett us warr” (f. 55),12 as well as two poems from the Venetia Digby sequence that were very popular in manuscript literary transmission (“The Picture of the Body” [Under-wood LXXXIV.3] and “The Mind” [Underwood LXXXIV.4], here titled “Minde” [ff. 89v-90] and “Of his Mistress

Rare or Unique Poems in British Library 315 sitting to be drawne” [f. 91r-v]). Among the apparently unique poems in Sloane 1446 is the anonymous piece “On an Hower glasse,” probably written in imitation of Jonson’s poem on the same topic:13 This glasse, that quite runns out to runne againe and still hath it’s begininge for it’s wane Mee thinkes should bee the bodie longe agoe of some distressed Amatorio Whoe in his Mistresse flame plaieinge the flie was burnt to dust and ashes in her eye And as a live, so dead showes how unblest poore lovers are, whose ashes finde no rest. (f. 26v) The two Venetia Digby poems Jonson wrote in the “instructions to a painter” subgenre14 seem to have influenced another unique and anonymous piece in the collection, “Of Constancy,” which begins a short sequence of poems on this “theame” (Poem 5, l. 31). The composition of verse on set themes was a common practice in academic settings and it carried over into the wider social environment. Of Constancy Welcome Paynter. If thou canst draw aright the lovely maide in simple black and white, thou shalt more Custome and more favour gaine then they that Princes favours doe obteyne for body-drawers many I can finde but never any that could draw the mindePaine[ter] Sir tis a taske I scarce dare undertake for some will censure for their pleasure sake men want the Judgment now they had of yore out-landish shaddowes only please, therefore ile try the skill is harbored in my brest for your content: I passe not for the rest An[swer] Thancks honest Painter, preethee have a care to draw her parts as comely as they are rather then backward be in any parte Limbe out the Center of a Constant hart. But (Painter) first conceive the mynde then see If thou canst draw about it constancye. for be assured the mynde cannot fit unles Constancey be in, or about it some myndes there be endued with Constance still In drawing such a minde tis litle skill.

316

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Every Painter what he sees can drawe but few or none the sight he never saw Pain[ter] Sir you know my minde, what ere while I said and thinges unask’d the sitting of the mayde. An[swer] T’is very true, and thats the Cheefest thing Concernes thy art and my desiring. But tis noe matter of much cunning skill In such a kinde to get a maydens will Pain[ter] Then loose noe tyme, but hast begon away for opportunity it is the fittest day. (ff. 84v-85) To Constancy Faire Mayde may my unpollisht tounge (free from passion of jealous wrong) presume to move a gentle suite? nor will I force you graunt unto’t For I had rather never crave then be deni’d what I would have it is a would concernes not much unlesse your favour without grutch. Aske you of me the choisest thinge comitted to my favouring ‘twould be the hight of all my pride (nor should you be in it denyd) T’have in my power such a graunt that I might still supply your want A happines beyond contente should wayte upon that Complement Then all my fortunes should you serve because I know how you deserve Fairest mayde deny not me for one request Ile graunt you three. Then modestly as if an Angell spake out of her mouth this comely answere brake (f. 85) Constancies answere Thrice gentle Sir, what should a mayden say, when (unawares) shees ceisd on by a man? On such faire termes, wee use not answere nay, If the request with reputation stand Then give me leave if such a doome I may (without taxacion to my Creditt) crave, such easy priviledges maydens say,

Rare or Unique Poems in British Library 317 they on demanndes without deniall have A mans intent, a woeman knowes not when he would have graunted: till she knoweth what A weomans fearefull, still suspecting men what they would fayne: and yet she knoweth what But (Courteous Sir) I’le not too teadious be Since you are thus attentive to my speech The priveledge I would, is modestie to know the quallity of your beseech In every action pure wisedome will Regarde the ende for thats the Artists skill. (f. 85r-v) Imprecatio Art lend me thy nature, Apollo lend me Elloquence, for now I meane to spend some of those sparks, thy wisdome gave to me upon the praises of lov’d Constancie Now Venus spare me thy soule-raping tounge to warble forth this all-deserving songe Dismount yee thesbian dames: whose lowde notes sing sweete Haleluias to your sacred Kinge and lend a sparke of your Caelestiall fire to find the Coales of this up-star’d desire. I did entende her shaddowe to draw forth but now I’ve found a substance of more worth How soone Intents are changed, when we see a better subject for our Poetrye? (f. 85v) Acrostickes on Constancey Cheerfull torrents of ever-streaming grace Ornaments garnisht with a sacred boone Nutriment from heaven, cherished that face Suggests this vertue in his sowles high-noone. Translating by this that soveraigne ill A knott tryumphant in his hopefull brest Nou[r]icing proud vices, strong heady will Contrary to the Rudiments of the rest. Invasions ‘gainst the soule expect in vayne Each ill’s ex supprest, where Constance swayes the mayne. (ff. 85v-86) To Constancie Pardon (deare sowle) the errors of my phraise Errors untaxte are frequent now-a-dayes

318

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript beauty beguiles a man so of his sence It holds him longe in frivolous suspence how loath I am to tell my wish before thou hast requested me once more, where love takes place it doth soe dimme our sight wee thincke all light is darke all darkenes light and love is made of such a brasen mold without all shame it makes the party bold. Once more she op’d the Cabine of her lipps and unawares this sacred Jewell slipps. (f. 86) Constancies answere Noe bare respect, noe unconcerninge feare shall take possession of my Constant heart Noe I had rather dye, then lyinge heere Prodigious monsters yeilding vertues smart Ah Lady vertue; Art to heaven gon? mounted thether by steedes of silent night? and leavest thy hand-mayd Constancy alone rent halfe in peeces, in this worlds twi-light? vertue, vertue, regard thy hand-mayds playnt and canonize true Constancye a sainct Sir I’me in hast. If you have ought to say speake without prejudice; for now you may. (f. 86) To Constancie Oh say not soe; tis faction to the Chast if any tell that Constancies in hast the worst of worsts, that ever man befell was Constance hast to rowle him: downe to hell. Why lanceo I thus into a deepe extreame? what meanes my muse to understand this theame? Now arts perfection, and natures grace the true Idea of an Angells face; For art and nature were at worke in thee and made the verie Pith of amitie vertues minion, o sacred creature compleate in forme, curious in feature: all-lov’d Constancie for whom the gods strove who first of all should gaine thy dearest love: And when they entred Combate for thy sake, (as tis suppos’d for love they’d sh skirmish make) It was confirmed by sacred Dyetie

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Rare or Unique Poems in British Library 319 all heavens arte should wayte on Constancey If any mortall laiden with Distresse) may understand so greate a happines or undertake to offer unto thee the best endeavors of his pyetie then (blessed virgin) I thy Beadseman, I prostrate my selfe in all humilitie, to offer to thy never changinge shrine the Choyse affections, which are termed myne may my unworthinesse one freedome have, Ile silent live, and never after crave And since thou Constance art, thou knowest it best heere is the Painter: I conceale the rest. The strings of her sweete tounge she loos’d againe and on this wise, her essence did co explain. (f. 86r-v) Her answere Were I a body able to be touched had I a substance capable of sence It were a marvell why I should have gruch’t a Curtesie of so smale consequence But I’me a spirit compact of Elements such as confirme an honest soules desire strengthening the sinewes of such good intents as have byn kindled by a sacred fire. the selfe opinion of a froward wit nor fond conceipte of any boasters shame (Fortunes delightes) have not my favor yet Reason and Judgment usher forth my name Patience my mother is: Joves Deity gott me: Judgment my kinge, vertue my Queene Twixt humble pride, and prowde humilitie the Pallace where I dwell is to be seene If you at any tyme should finde one stray, or should your selfe desirous be to know, which unto Constancie might be the Way Till Reason will informe him where to goe: If ought of this the Painter can expresse by Industrie or any better skill, Ile sitt, and he shall draw what comelynesse his Pencill can, or lively Coulors will. But tis in vayne to use your tearmes of art they add smale grace unto a Constant hart

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript yet all the Painters labour is not lost this will suffice to quit to quit [sic] his labours cost farewell farewell thou harbinger of peace the Angells Comfort, the labourers increase. Painter if wee noe better favour finde weele never after trye to draw the mynde. (ff. 86v-87)

These poems may have as their context the poet’s relationship with a woman named Constance, a term used four times instead of “Constancie” or “Constancey”—including in the acrostic piece: in the last poem, the speaker says, “since thou Constance art” (5.54). Influenced by Jonson’s Venetia Digby poems, particularly by the situation of trying to paint the inner life of a person in a portrait, these pieces reflect the fashionable Neoplatonic amorousness of the Caroline court.

Answer Poetry and Other Competitive Verse in the Collection The sequence on the theme of constancy builds answer poems into its dialogic structure. In Sloane 1446, there are many other examples of answer verse: the three-poem exchange between Sir George Radney, who committed suicide, and the Countess of Hertford, who rejected him for another suitor;15 the poems by William Strode and Jeremiel Terrent responding to Richard Corbett’s poem celebrating the preservation of the stained glass windows of Fairford church from Puritan iconoclasm;16 and the two poems written in response to Henry Rainolds’s “A Blackmoore maide in love with a faire Boy” (“Why (lovely boy) why fly’est from me” [f. 71]]), one of them by Henry King.17 Although Sloane 1446 does not have Jonson’s “Ode to himself,” which he wrote in response to the theatrical failure of his play, The New Inn, it has two pieces responding to the event and to Jonson’s testy poem: Thomas Carew’s “To Ben: Johnson uppon occasion of his Ode to himselfe Come Leave the Loathed Stage” (“T’is true [Deare Ben:] thy just chastising hand” [ff. 55v-56]) and Owen Felltham’s “Upon Ben Johnsons play call’d the newe Inne/ 1621” (“Come leave this sawcy way” [ff. 56–57]). Another poem and answer set apparently survives only in this manuscript: The severall stepps & proceedings of Love First did I light on you, ere I was ware then did I like you well but did not care then was I made your freind by your desert

Rare or Unique Poems in British Library 321 And then at length, love did possess my hart And then to Custome did my kindness growe and nowe doth Custome into nature goe. Fortune was cause that I on you did light. Beautie the cause that I did take delight good nature cause that I became your friend And frendshipp cause that love can have no end Custome is said an other lawe to bee nature is more then any lawe to mee. Though fortune Change it shall not chang my minde thoughe beautie fade, your face shall favour finde frendshippp shall not with your good nature weare nor love remove though you remove, (my deare) Custome and nature binde mee to those lawes which make mee hold, though you withhold the Cause. (f. 48v) Answere Whoe so hath happ to light uppon a jewell and knowes so well to governe his affection Either the fire is Colde, or badd the fuell if presentlie hee bee not in subjection Or else I must Confess, his witt’s farr greater then either myne, or manie times may better Fortune is blind and should not guide the wise Beautie will fade and shall not yeild delight Nature doth see me a god in beastlie eies Freindshipp a knott that’s often tyed f[u]ll slight I doe not freind my freind for custome make But all for true love and for Conscience sake What fortune can doe I doe not respect neither for beauties colours care I much. my true loves change I never will suspect For in the world I thincke there is none such: In spight of Custome Nature and the rest of all the world I love my true love best. (f. 49) Here the poetic debate is not between a lover and his mistress, but rather between a lover and a critical friend, as in Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella Sonnets 14, 21, and 69 and Donne’s “The Canonization.”

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In addition to the answer poetry, this manuscript has some poems that respond to the same occasion or topic. For example, Richard Corbett’s and Henry King’s poems about the birth of Prince Charles (the future Charles II) are conjoined as the second and third poems in the collection.18 There are two poems mourning the 1632 death of the European Protestant hero, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, the heroic and successful leader of Swedish forces in the Thirty Years’ War who died at the Battle of Lützen on November 6, 1632. The first of the elegies reads: On the King of Swedens death I will not weepe thy losse nor say theres none can releive bedreedo vertue thou being gon I will not Curse thy victorie, nor say though wee were Conquerers wee lost the day, That thou wert all of us, that in thy fall (it ^thou^ being its soule) twas the worlds funerall they that thus morne and Idely mencion thee pittie themselves, and make an Elegie on their owne hopes and troubled at thy dombe with Crafty sorrowe write on Christendome I that have read devoutely all thy raigne (and feare an Ague Feaver ^Ague or some^ such paine as easie princes did of might surprise thy ripe designes robbing thy obsequies of wonder and amasement) blesse thy fall worthie thy great selfe worthier far then all thy envied accions, there being naught to doe greater then what th’ast done, but to die soe when thou hadst tamde all powers, made every thing so hopeles weake weake Ambassadors might wyn then wouldst noe longer stay to shew thy hand aym’d at a Nobler Tryumph then their land The king who shall thy warr thy worth intende may get thy Empire, hardly such an end. (f. 69v)

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There are many elegies for the fallen Protestant hero in both manuscript and print, but this one seems to have survived only in Sloane 1446. The second piece, simply entitled “Another” (“Tis sinne to weepe or praise, oh let me vent” [ff. 69v-70r]), is by Dr. Richard Love of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Many Christ Church, Oxford poets, including Corbett, Strode, King, Jasper Mayne, Terrent, and Robert Gomersall also wrote elegies for the Swedish king, as did other contemporary poets such as Thomas Randolph, Sir Thomas Roe, and Aurelian Townshend.

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Other Social and Occasional Verse in Sloane 1446 Sloane 1446 has an apparently unique copy of an epitaph for the innovative English instrument maker John Rose, who died in 1611.19 His viola da gambas and other musical instruments have great historical importance, and the presence of this poem in a London collection is a sign of his visibility in contemporary musical circles: upon John Rose an exellent maker of Musicall instruments Here rest John Rose’s bones; his better parte in heaven doth live, on Earth his name and Art whoe liveinge built himselfe such lastinge Tombes by his owne skill in Lutes and Violls wombes that vaine is stone, or brasse is faine to raise for why? his instruments doe sound his praise. (f. 25) Another apparently unique elegy seems to have originated in Cambridge: An Elegie on Henry Skipp drowned at Bradly in Darbisheire Could I take trace with greefe beloved mate I lesse should taxe the envy of thy fate that by so short a cut in freindly sort wafted thy soule to her long wished port But I must waile thy want and wish some power from tymes swift wing had pluct that dismall hower when thee, admiring lovely vertues face from thine reflecting, in the liquide glasse, (like that poore pittied lover stooping downe for a cold kisse thenamored waves did drowne while the wives jealous of such hatefull love to drive thee from their rude embraces strove and when they saw they could not rescue thee murmurd and chidd the flouds kinde cruelty Oh I could now my sorrowes store supply with bloud, and weepe my vitall fountaine dry while I record his life, whose beauties light was a sure course to steere our lifes aright who with applauses not of hands but harts did only in the best acts play his partes keeping his mind still as the brow of day cleire and unstained in every humaine way Then damn’d detraccion wherefore shamist thou not

[5]

[10]

[15]

[20]

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript with black selfe murther, his white fame to blott? who was as farr from plotting such a wrong [25] as thou from grace, or governement of tounge whose love was so devout to his Creator that his dimmst image in the stamps of nature he did with reverence behould, imbracd it and thought it sacriligious to deface it. [30] For with as much pretence they might have said that the great Prophet whome the Ravens fed had byn extinct, by lighteninge from the skyes because on earth they did not close his eyes who as by fire to heaven he made assent [35] so this by water to that region went * Exodus Whose sweete expired breath like *Moses tree, 15.25 would make the bitterest waters plesant be And the black lake where Sodome earst did burne to cleirest streames of fluedo Cristall turne [40] ofluid nor were those Seas that in their guiltie wombe Did poore Leander with his love entombe so deepe in murther as this shallowe floud that his fowles [sic] waves mixt with so foule ^pure^ a bloud which with such heavenly flames was inlie fired [45] that sure the hellish destines conspired to have allaid them by the coldest death But he that like him drawes a taintlesse breath feares not their force but with undaunted heart meets hells worst Ingine, and deathes blackest dart [50] nor should man grutch, at his appointed day unto just heaven his borrowed breath to pay nor matters it, whether by weale or woe, wee passe unto it so to heaven wee goe where his emb[blank in ms]20 sowle to swim hath learn’d [55] in seas of blisse where noe shore is discernd and drincks to mine a full carouse of pleasure that hopes to pledge him in as deepe a measure and when she breaks up howse and hence removes with him rejoyne in endles league of loves. [60] T B (ff. 66v-67)

The author whose initials are subscribed to this poem probably is “Thomas Bancroft,” who was born in Swarkston, Derbyshire, was a student at St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge in the late Jacobean era, and settled finally in Bradley, Derbyshire where his friend Henry Skipp apparently drowned.21 The speaker of the poem identifies the deceased

Rare or Unique Poems in British Library 325 as a “beloved mate” (l. 1) about whose drowning there were rumors of suicide: “damn’d detraccion wherefore shamist thou not / with black selfe murther, his white fame to blott?” (ll. 23–24). The heaven in which the speaker imagines his friend is, like the tavern, a place in which his friend’s soul “drincks to mine a full carouse of pleasure” (l. 57). One of the other unique poems in Sloane 1446 is a drinking song suitable to such an environment: A Frollicke22 Bacchus (thou god of grapes and wyne) to thee this Crown’d Cupp I resigne Where in all pleasures swimme Bacchus; by us these bowls wee’le keepe and while this lasts, we’ll all drinck deepe And fill it upp to the brimme Then merrilie laughe and merrilie quaffe And merrilie merrilie drincke all off And merilie wee will singe: (f. 46) This last poem celebrates male conviviality and it fits in well with a number of other poems in the collection—fashionably witty pieces that often deal with the topic of courtship and love from a masculine pointof-view.

Amorous and Bawdy Verse in Sloane 1446 Several masculinist poems survive in Sloane 1446 in apparently unique copies. The first follows a poem entitled “Solicitation to a married woeman” (“Thou doest denie mee cause thou arte a wife” [f. 26]):23 To Th Twoe sisters, the one faire, the other witty Whilst with myne eies I veiwe you both a parte you both hath both my eies, and both my hart But when I doe converse with both I see in face and mynde an inequalitie since then to both in love I am inclyned you for your face I love, you for mynde. (f. 26) The second poem looks like an early expression of Cavalier amorousness:

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript On a flie fluttering about a Ladies face Adventurous flie that darst approch loves torches Feelest thou not how shee scorches Flieing by, those starrs in the Heaven of love Thou’ll a newe Phaeton prove. Hide thie selfe in her dangling curles fond flie Rather nestle there, then die Hee Flies from eies to head, yet nought will doe For her haire flameth too. (f. 39v)

Drawing on classical models, poems about flees, lice, and other insects having the freedom to explore a beloved’s body the male lover lacks were a staple of Renaissance love lyrics. Another apparently unique and untitled poem about love is an expression of regret for the speaker’s youthful impetuosity: I turn’d my glasse beefore my sand was runne I tooke my pen beefore I knew my sence I wisht to weare beefore my thread was spunne and I did delve beefore I knewe defence But all in vaine did to this issue growe that hast mad wast and wrought my overthrow. (f. 42v) This follows the love sonnet quoted above (“Her darlinge deare (the mothers tender care).” This piece hovers on the boundary between lovecomplaint and palinode. Another apparently unique example of amorous verse would seem to have been addressed to a social superior: A lover more taken with inward virtue then outward beautie Madam I heare good judgments call you faire And you may thinke I came with greedie eies T’is not for shape or coloure that I care lov’d [sic] built on these is short liv’d, that I care quicklie ^dies^ Myne eies are love proofe; I no thraldome feare But when love plants a battry gainst myne eare. No Palisado Rampier, nor Redout mans skill can raise, are able to withstand

Rare or Unique Poems in British Library 327 those powerfull sallies, which your love throwes out with everie word; my loves strength you comaund As if Heaven gave you power with large comission that man must yeild without all Composition I Can not love (I must confesse the truth) But as poore Captives doe their Conquering lord nor can I plead or beautie, shape or youth I can bee faithfull both in thought & word And if it please you in your high disdaine to lead me Captive I can scorne the chaine But if your beautie give my service life you may finde some thinge wh worthie your commaund Within a thankfull hart may raise a strife With all your favoures and with powerfull hand If you mainteine, my honest hart will bee kept with the joy of this Captivitie. / (f. 48r-v) Some of the military terms, such as “Palisado,” “Rampier” (rampart), and “Redout,” suggest on-the-ground military experience. Love language in this poem signals social respect and clientage. An apparently unique item, in a Jonsonian lyric style, like the instructions-to-a-painter poem or the previous poem, is concerned with representing the inner worth of a mistress: In praise of a Mistress. The glory of the brightest Day the morninge ayre perfumed in May the first borne rose of all the Springe the downe beneath a Turtles winge A lute just reachinge to the eare what e’re is soft or sweete or faire Are but her shredds, whoe fill the place And summe of everlie single grace. As in a Child the Nurse descries the mothers lipp the fathers eies The Uncles nose and doth applie an Owner to each parte soe I In her could annalize the store of all the choice ere nature bore Each private peece to mynde may call some worth but none can match it all

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Poore Emblems they can but express one element of Comliness none are so rich to shewe in one all peeces of perfection Nor can the pencill represent more then the outward Lineament then whoe canne limme the portraiture of (beauties life) behaviour Or what can figure everie kinde of vertues that adorne the mynd? Thought can not drawe her picture full even thought to her is gross, & dull. (f. 50r-v)

Another apparently unique lyric focuses on the obsession with physical beauty: To a gentlewoman that desired a Doctors helpe to make her faire Faire one, y’have pos’d mee and my skill: you crave Arts slender branch, who natures tincture have At your demande I gaz’d upon your face to sp[y]e defects, forgive me (beauties grace) though I found none; tis your perfection so made me err to highten your complection y’have taught me to by Cheeks so coloured that beauties summarie is white and redd If I had but an extract Cymicall from that same Colour twould allure you all (yea Vulgar beauties) for to have it on to see it only by reflection t’would make you faire so have the Poets seene obscurer Nymphs shine by the Paphian Queene. The Sunn gives lustre to the lesser light so Common faces from a face more bright Receave a being, yet, like shaddowes dimme heighten the light of well-pictur’d limme I can give Collour to you, but your redd so native faire, will shame the tinctured I can helpe nature in a wann aspect but yours is pure Arts furthered by neglect Give me a Ruder beauty, and Ile trye what art can doe, and sprightful Chymistrie I’le pollish thicker hides, A grograine24 skinn

Rare or Unique Poems in British Library 329 like a deplumed goose, Ile paint it thinne But your rare texture hath a finer wofe the walls more even and the graine more smooth a parched shriveled face Ide bath, and tell yee that I had shew’d it Jason like to Jelly, your milky front, your pure enlivened snowe would thaw away, should I but use it soe your Sattin softnes, braves the Genoese your pulpy palme the smothe hand Veronese your azure conduits with such moysture dies the skinn that thence aeriall roses rise Beware of wrincklinge then that purer hew with sublim’d oyle, with Ceruseo Chalke, or dew your teeth will pay for’t, Brimstone wynd & weather will crack the paint, will peele your painted leather I know’t I’ve seene, and prov’de, what Italy gives to a Signiora’s, simmetrie I’ve seene and proved all what amorous France what Laura us’d (who with a peircing glance kild Petrarch) and what Roman dames put on when they goe bravest to devotion and when y’are come to age, then may yow strive to be like them, faire, but in prospective, when you are old I’le seetho you and appoint a setled station to each trembling joynct Ile harden then your witherd udders, Crack with Iron boddies your warped backe then on your mumping hollow plaistred sheild you may beare armes Gules in a silver Feild Now you dare exercise your sences crave noe helpe of art, who natures tinctures have. (f. 83r-v)

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With its fashionable European references and literary and artistic allusions, this poem assumes a high degree of cultural sophistication on the part of both writer and audience. The six-line section of this piece preceding the final couplet disturbingly contaminates the poem’s concentration on youthful feminine beauty with a discourse of ugliness to which both Sidney and Donne resorted. All these poems, however, written in the incubation period of Cavalier verse, reflect the influence of the witty verse of such university poets as Richard Corbett and William Strode, who were themselves influenced by the poetry of Ben Jonson and John Donne. Such verse continued to be written through the midcentury, gathered for print publication in Wit’s Recreations (1640) and The

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Academy of Complements (1640) as well as in the many anthologies and miscellanies that followed.25

Political Poems in Sloane 1446 Finally, Sloane 1446 has a number of poems reflecting the politics of the Jacobean and Caroline periods. One of the apparently unique poems in this collection is a six-line verse mocking an impotent male: Howe canne that tree but fade and wither away that dailie lacks the Comfort of the Day? Howe canne thy wife but rang, & away runne When as by thee the deede was never donne Is this a life? nay death you may it call to have a wife and can not doe withall.26 (f. 43v) This short piece is an adaptation and repurposing of a three-stanza song originally composed by Thomas, Lord Vaux and published in the Elizabethan poetical miscellany, the Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576), under the title “No pleasure without some paine.” The first stanza of the Vaux piece, which the poet-reviser used, reads: How can the tree but wast, and wither awaie, That hath not sometyme comfort of the Sonne: How can that flower but fade, and sone decaie, That alwaies is with darke clouds ouer ronne. Is this a life, naie death you maie it call, That feeles eche paine, and knoweth no joye at all.27 The Sloane version essentially retains the first line and the last two lines of the stanza (the poem’s refrain), avoiding the cross-rhymes in turning the stanza into couplets. The probable topical allusion in this piece is to the most famous scandal of the Jacobean period, the divorce of Frances Howard from her allegedly impotent husband, the third Earl of Essex. It could have been written at the time of the scandal, and then transcribed in Sloane 1446 along with other poems from that era, but, a few years later, mockery of Essex’s impotence was irresistible once he had been appointed general of the parliamentary army at the start of the Civil Wars.28 In any case, the apparently unique adaptation of the Vaux poem that is found in Sloane 1446 is an example of the way topical poems could take on new meanings in changed historical circumstances. Another poem in Sloane 1446 with the generic title “Of Favorites” (“Dazled with the height of place” [f. 76]), originally about the fall of the

Rare or Unique Poems in British Library 331 Earl of Somerset, the man for whom Frances Howard divorced Essex, is a second notable case of this sort.29 Another apparently unique political poem in Sloane 1446 is a lyric attributed to Sir Walter Ralegh: W Vertue the best monument Not Caesars birth made Caesar to survive But Caesares vertues, which are yett a live A great mans vices damme his fame so deepe ther’s noe redemption when his vertues sleepe Actions crowne vertues, and like pulses prove Whither the soule of’s greatnes sweetlie move with natures harmoney: which standing still, or faintlie beateinge shew them dead or ill. Sir Walt[er] Raleighe. (f. 24v) In his edition of Ralegh’s poetry, Michael Rudick identifies this as “a poem about Ralegh, rather than one even possibly by him.” Rudick suggests: “The subscription … may reflect carelessness of a copyist at some point in the transmission, but, more likely, it shows the poem was taken by a collector to be Ralegh’s own assertion, here comparable to the other notices that impute to him the qualities of a Roman political hero in the face of death.”30 One of the reasons for Ralegh’s presence in seventeenth-century poetry collections is that the Jacobean political victimage of this witty poet-intellectual was seen as politically relevant and morally instructive. Other poems in Sloane 1446 reflect the interests of both university figures and urban professionals in the royal family, prominent aristocrats, and national as well as international news. Poems about the death of Queen Anne, the Puritan movement, the scandalous earl of Castlehaven, the jailing of Lady Bedford’s kinsman for debt, and the plight of Princess Elizabeth in exile from the Palatinate are mixed with both serious and trivial pieces of more parochial and local interest to Caroline collectors gathering verse from both university and London.

Conclusion Given the large number of verse anthologies surviving from the 1620s–40s, collections that repeat not just single poems but fairly large groups of poems, it may be surprising to us that the apparently unique copies of poems in a manuscript anthology such as Sloane 1446 should constitute about fifteen percent of its contents. The shared poems point to the larger circulation of poems and groups of poems in university and urban social networks; the unique poems suggest more restricted social

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circumstances, if not also the compositional activities of the collector. Since the quality of many of these unusual pieces is on a par with that of the known canonical works of the period, and since these poems are all, in some way, culturally representative and socially typical, we need to include them in our accounts of the literature of the early modern period.

Notes 1 Peter Beal, CELM https://celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/british-library-sloane. html (accessed 25 March 2015), dates the collection c.1633. There are two hands used in the manuscript—the first a mixed hand, on f. 2, after the first six lines up to f. 64v and the second, a rounded italic hand in the first six lines of f. 2 and on ff. 64v-91v and 92v-94r. Beal believes that they might have been used by the same person. The poems and poetic fragments are indexed by first lines at the end of the collection (ff. 93–94). Three of the items are excerpts rather than whole poems: ll. 5–16 of William Strode’s “On Westwell Downs” (f. 22v); a four-line section of his “On a girdle” (“This Circle heer is drawne aboute” [f. 24])—the poem in its full version beginning “Whene’er the waist makes too much haste,” and the anonymous untitled poem beginning “Looke on the beast[s] that in the meadows stray” (ff. 41v-42) in a version that lacks the last eight lines found in BL MS Add. 43410, f. 172. 2 This poem is also the first in the following other manuscripts: BL MS Add. 37683, f. 1; Bod. MSS Eng. Poet. e.14, f. 2 and Rawl. Poet. 206, f. 1. 3 The other Herrick lyrics are “A forsaken lady that died for love” (f. 74v; “The Curse” in Hesperides); “Upon a lady’s dress of hair stuck with jewels” (f. 75v; “The Admonition” in Hesperides); and “On a false mistress” (f. 88) (“To his false mistress” in Hesperides). The presence of Herrick poems among other university poems in this manuscript seems to reinforce the argument for the early composition of much of Herrick’s verse advanced in John Creeser, “Times trans-shifting: Chronology and the Misshaping of Herrick,” ELR, 39.1 (Winter 2009): 163–96. Creeser, 190, dates “The Welcome to Sack” and “His fare-well to Sack” in the 1610s when Herrick was at St. John’s College and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. 4 Mary Hobbs, Early Seventeenth-Century Verse Miscellany Manuscripts (Aldershot, U.K.: Scolar Press, 1992), 74–78, discusses the contents of this collection, particularly in relation to a group of manuscripts preserving the poetry of Henry King and his family. She notes that it has forty-two poems in common with the Stoughton manuscript (which she has presented in facsimile and transcribed—see The Stoughton Manuscript: A Manuscript Miscellany of Poems by Henry King and his Circle, circa 1636, ed. Mary Hobbs [Aldershot, U.K. and Brookfield, VT: Scolar Press, 1990]). The name “Francis Baskervile” (f. 93v) is transcribed in the last part of the manuscript. Hobbs identifies him as a resident of Malmesbury, Wiltshire. Hobbs, Verse Miscellany Manuscripts, 75, mentions BL MSS Add. 25303 and 21433, as well as Lansdowne 777 as Inns-of-Court collections related to Sloane 1446. 5 Carew left Oxford in 1611 and entered the Middle Temple in 1612 (see Rhodes Dunlap, ed., The Poems of Thomas Carew [Oxford, 1949], xvi–xvii). His poems were first published posthumously in 1640, but they circulated widely in manuscript. Sloane 1446 has twenty-two poems by him. 6 Sloane 1446 includes several poems later published in Poems written by … William Earl of Pembroke … Many of which are answered by way of Repartee, by Sir Benjamin Ruddier, Knight (1660): “A Pastorall betweene a

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Lover and a Shepherd uppon hearing a faire Nimph singe in the woods” (“Sheppheard, gentle Sheaphearde, harke” [f. 47r-v]); “A stragling Lover reclaym’d” (“Till nowe I never did beleeve” [f. 49r-v]; “A Lover not haveinge the hart to speak to his Mistress would have had her understand his mynde by his Lookes” (“Blinde beautie if it bee a loss” [ff. 50v-51]); and [untitled] “What I in weomen long have wished to see” (f. 76). Beal, CELM https://celm-ms.org.uk/authors/spenseredmund.html (accessed 7 March 2015) notes that manuscript copies of this sonnet are found in Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 85, f. 7v, BL MS Add. 53723, f. 17, Cam. MS Dd.5.75, f. 37v, and (the first quatrain in) BL MS Harley 7392(2), f. 28. Laurence Cummings, “Spenser’s Amoretti VIII: New Manuscript Versions,” Studies in English Literature 4.1 (Winter, 1964): 125–35, argues that an earlier version of the poem circulated in manuscript, whose differences from the text in the 1595 edition were also subject to scribal error and deliberate changes by either the author or someone else. See his specific discussion of the Sloane 1446 version (131–32). See the discussion of early and mid-seventeenth-century sonnets in the next chapter. This poem is also found in BL MS Add. 22118, f. 21; Yale Osb. MS b.197, p. 155; and Folger MS V.a.339, f. 223v. C. H. Herford, Percy Simpson, and Evelyn Simpson (eds.), Ben Jonson, The Poems, the Prose Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947), 8.106, identify this version of the poem as a “first draft” and note that “Coelia” is in place of “onely” in the first line in this manuscript and in Trinity College, Dublin MS G.2.21. In this textually variant version of Under-wood III, ll. 5–8 are omitted, as they are in several other manuscripts, including BL MSS Add. 25707 and 30982 (see Herford and Simpson, Jonson, 8.143). “The Houre-Glass” (“Doe but consider this small dust,” Under-wood VIII). Jonson “Mind” (“Painter you are come but may be gon” [ff. 89v-90]) appears six items later in the collection. “Sir George Radney to the Countess of Hertford” (“From one that languisheth in discontent” [ff. 30–32), “The Countesse Answere” (“Divided in your sorrowes, I have strove” [ff. 32-34v]), and “Sir George Radney before he killd himselfe” (“What shall I doe that am undone?” [f. 34v]). Corbett’s “Uppon Fayreford windowes” (“Tell me you Antisaintes, why brasse” [f. 11r-v]), Strode’s “I knowe noe painte of Poetry” (ff. 51v–52v), and Terrent’s “I hope at this time t’is no newes” (f. 53r-v), the last of which is rare in surviving manuscripts–found also in Bod. MS Eng. Poet. e.97, p. 33, another manuscript with a large body of Christ Church poetry. Henry King’s “The Boy’s answere” (“Black-Maide complayne not though I fly” [f. 72] and the anonymous “The Maydes Reply” (“Ah silly boy how may that be” [f. 72v]), the second of which is followed by the thematically related popular piece by Walton Poole, “In praise of black hare & eyes” (“If shaddowes be a pictures excellence’” [f. 72v]). Richard Corbett’s “On the birth of Prince Charles” (“When private men gett sonnes they gett a spoone” [f. 9v]) and Henry King’s “By occasion of the yonge Prince Charles his happy birth” (“Att this glad Triumphe when most Poets use” [f. 10]). See his biography in ODNB https://www-oxforddnb-com.proxy.lib.wayne. edu/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128e-139506?rskey=z6vI8V&result=10 (accessed 4 July 2020).

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20 This word, which is blank after the first three letters, might be either “embarked” or “embalmed.” 21 See Nicholas Jagger’s short biography of Bancroft in the ODNB http://www. oxforddnb.com/view/article/1273?docPos=1 (accessed 25 March 2015); see also William Charvat, “Thomas Bancroft,” PMLA 47.3 (1932): 753–58. Bancroft published a collection of 480 of his poems in Two Books of Epigrammes and Epitaphs (1639). 22 The OED’s third definition of “frolic” is “Humorous verses circulated at a feast. Obs.” 23 This anonymous poem also appears in Yale Osb. MS b.104, p. 114; Ros. MS 239/18, p. 79; and two printed books, Wit and Drollery (1656) (as “The loose Wooer”), p. 125, and Musarum Deliciae (1672) (as “Solicitation to a married Woman”), p. 46. 24 The OED defines “grosgrain” as “Any of various corded fabrics.” 25 See Adam Smyth, “Profit and Delight”: Printed Miscellanies in England, 1640–1682 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2004). 26 Given the fact that at that time “th” was pronounced as a hard “t,” “withall” in the last line punningly sounds like “wittol” (a willing cuckold). 27 I quote the text, without modernization, from The Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576–1606), ed. Hyder Edward Rollins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927), 64–65. 28 For example, the Cavalier John Cleveland’s poem “To P[rince] Rupert,” mocked the general’s erectile disfunction: see the text cited in Andrew McRae, Literature, Satire and the Early Stuart State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 219. 29 For a discussion of this phenomenon, see Ted-Larry Pebworth, “Sir Henry Wotton’s ‘Dazel’d Thus, with Height of Place’ and the Appropriation of Political Poetry in the Earlier Seventeenth Century,” PMLA 71 (1977): 151–69. 30 The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh: A Historical Edition, ed. Michael Rudick (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Renaissance English Text Society, 1999), lxxiv.

10 Fugitive Sonnets in SeventeenthCentury Manuscript Collections

Some of the rare or unique poems preserved in only one or a few early modern English manuscripts are sonnets written between the first decade of the seventeenth century and John Milton’s innovative uses of the form.1 I call these “fugitive” poems because, in addition to their rarity, these mostly anonymous pieces are not well known and have not been visible in standard literary histories. They are interesting for a number of reasons. They demonstrate that the sonnet did not disappear in this historical gap. The publication of Lady Mary Wroth’s sonnet cycle in 1621,2 the belated publication or republication of the sonnets of such writers as Fulke Greville,3 Samuel Daniel, and Michael Drayton,4 and the religious sonnets published in the printed volumes of the poetry of John Donne, George Herbert and others are well-known because of their place in print culture.5 Some clusters of sonnets can be found in manuscripts from the period: for example, William Browne of Tavistock’s series of fourteen poems, “Caelia,” is preserved in BL MS Lansdowne 777 (ff. 14–17). Bod. MS Add. B.97 has a series of sonnets about a rejected lover—first three poems explicitly linked, followed by six sonnets labeled “Canto[s].”6 But the miscellaneous sonnets that found their way into manuscript circulation and compilation and survive in only one or a few copies have been virtually invisible. These poems offer us some interesting examples of deviation from the expected Italian, Shakespearean, and Spenserian7 rhyme schemes and organizational principles, in some cases testing the limits of the definition of the sonnet itself. These miscellaneous and rare sonnets also demonstrate the broad social usefulness of the form and its appropriation by writers who are by no means professional poets.

Defining the Sonnet Form There is an initial problem of how to define the sonnet form. The Italian and English or Shakespearean versions are the main models. The first has a structure and rhyme scheme that highlights the octave/sestet structure and the marked turn that takes place at the beginning of the poem’s ninth line: abbaabbacdecde. The second may still maintain the turn at the start of the ninth line, but it also offers a different structure: three quatrains and a

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concluding couplet: ababcdcdefefgg. In the Shakespearean model, the couplet, as Rosalie Colie long ago observed,8 often reads like a short epigram (and he was not the only early modern English author to produce what were, in effect, sonnet-epigram hybrids). Sonnet collections or sequences, from Petrarch’s Rime through Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609), however, sometimes contain poems that depart from either of these models: there are iambic hexameter, rather than iambic pentameter, sonnets, such as the first and eighth sonnets of Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella and fifteen-line poems such as Shakespeare’s Sonnet 99 (ababacdcdefefgg).9 Among the poems I have collected, there is a fifteen-line one with an unusual rhyme scheme (abbaaccadeedfdf):10

Tell mee sharpe needle wherwith her lively skill would have deceav’d the Hives sweete Citizen armd with which she dares to dare againe That heavenly hand that did Arackney spill Tell mee what injurie what harme, what ill Those Prettie fingars ever did to thee To Peirce their harmlesse Skin soe cruelly Leave Leave, or if thoul’t needs be pricking still Turne thy keene Poynt to her obdurate hearte There trie thy sharpest strength make many a dint & deeply wound that unrelentinge Flint which done thou hast acted a most glorious Part & well mayst vaunt to have performed more Then Cupid Could with all his strength & Art Thoe hee three years beseidg’d the rocke before Finis (Bod. MS Eng. poet. c.50, f. 83v)11

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Structurally, this poem breaks into units of four, three, four and four lines (marked by “Tell me,” “Tell me,” Leave Leave,” and “which done”), clashing with the rhyme scheme, which has three quatrains followed by a tercet that picks up on a rhyme word from the third quatrain. In any case, this poem is a departure from the usual sonnet models. Also, its situation of an obdurate mistress’s being stung by a bee is somewhat unusual, though there is another unique poem on the topic found in John Percival’s manuscript collection, “On a gentle woman walkinge in A Garden who was stunge with A bee” (“My senses failes [sic] me what is now I see” [f. 44]). Shakespeare’s collection contains a (probably early) tetrameter sonnet written, it would seem, for Ann Hathaway (Sonnet 145) and a twelve-line poem in couplets (Sonnet 126) that concludes the section containing poems to the young man who is the main love-object for the sonnet-speaker. The latter example raises the question of whether fourteen-line poems in couplets

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 337 can be recognized as sonnets. Some seven-couplet poems (a form found, among other places in epigram collections such as John Harington’s) seem to have the structural marks of sonnets: octave/sestet contrasts or (often indented) final couplets that summarize or offer a logical conclusion to the preceding twelve lines. Such poems might be thought of as “accidental” sonnets or sonnet-epigram hybrids. Rosalie Colie points out that he generic boundaries between sonnets and quatorzain epigrams was blurred in the Renaissance by the influence of The Greek Anthology, with its emphasis on amatory subject-matter: she observed that “few epigrammatists or sonneteers made strict formal distinctions between the Sonnet and the quatorzain epigram.”12 Therefore, especially when fourteen-line epigrams have, apart from their rhyme-scheme, a sonnet structure such as that characteristic of the Shakespearean model, they might be included within the sonnet subgenre. Despite his expressed hostility to the sonnet form as a kind of poetic Procrustean bed,13 Ben Jonson wrote six sonnets, including two Shakespearean sonnets (Epigrammes LVI and Under-wood LXX, the latter a fourteen-line poem with a quasi-Shakespearean rhyme scheme (abbacddcefefgg),14 and another poem unrhymed through the first twelve lines but concluding with a rhymed couplet (“Riches” in Uncollected Poems).15 He also penned eight seven-couplet poems (Epigrammes III, XIV, CIII, CXI, CXXVII, CXXXI, CXXXII; Uncollected Poems 58): some of them, such as his pieces to William Camden (Epigrammes XIV), Lady Mary Wroth (Epigrammes CIII, CXI), William Roe (Epigrammes CXXVIII and CXXXI), and Joshua Sylvester (Epigrammes CXXXII) and his poem prefacing Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Minde in General, perform a traditional task of sonnets as verse-epistles or commendatory verse. Alistair Fowler calls the poem to Lady Mary Wroth “a sonnet in distichs.”16 Some writers of sevencouplet poems, such as Robert Herrick, seem to have used a threequatrain-plus-couplet structure for their pieces.17 Some of the fourteen-line poems found in manuscript collections are written in couplets,—for example, an epistolary sonnet found in two manuscript collections: Muse goe present these harmlese lines, these many Lines fitting all times, not to this, but any. Mirth to the man, deser[v]es it may all good Attend his pleasurs, and thy livelyhoode To writ much thus I joy not, this too much For criticisme, but favours, ^o^n censure is such That I conclude such favours have noe end Noe such alive that ends in such a frei^n^d Then take not this for the affected straine Or ishue [sic] of some poetizing braine Noe, twas not affectation but affection

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript First sought o^c^casion, next made this election Ambitious to obtaine this some small favour Conceive my meaning and conceile it ever: (Bod. MS Eng. Poet. e.14, f. 32)18

There seems to be an octave/sestet division in this poem, marked by the word “Then” at the start of the ninth line. A unique love sonnet in couplets by Sir William Skipwith seems to break into three quatrains and a two-line conclusion: O thou that art the Phoenix of our tyme gott with Celestiall fire voyde of all Crime, Bend that all killinge, all Commandinge eye upon thy vassale, once before I die. And thoughe’t it rest not in anie mortall powre to save my lyfe one minute of an howre: Yet with one smile your servant shalbee blest his dyeinge soule shall have eternall rest That I’^me^ dispis’d deere, deere, you doe but right still doe your vertues in myne eyes shine bright. for how Can I when worthles was my prime hope for respect in th[‘]autumme of my tyme; Yet this I’le sweare, & you shall finde it true a truer heart shall never die for you. W. Sk:/ (BL MS Add. 25707, f. 137) Another unique couplet poem in the Skipwith manuscript that praises women’s beauty might qualify as a sonnet: They which make heaven their booke; & the chast starrs Capitall Letters and great Characters where by they spell events, read that this yeare No dull eclipes shall shame our Hemisphaere though else where seene. They ly: Did not I see An earthly peece of flesh, twixt one and mee so Justly interpos’d betwixt that light That it begat a darknes braved the night. I saw a starr (oh were my armes the sphaere) Discharge an influence might crowne a yeare But an unfortunate disastrous looke Dark as ^as^ her mother Earth, that beauty tooke out of his sight: sure an eclipse so black was ill forgotten in the Almanak. (BL MS Add. 25707, f. 89v)

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 339 Structurally, this seems to break into an octave and sestet. Another seven-couplet poem in this collection, “A sua signiora, sopra l’inconstanza del suo amore” (“As yow are pure confesse, how weake the joyes” [f. 65v]) seems to break into three quatrains and a couplet. In a large collection of verse, Huntington MS 198.2, there is a Shakespearean love sonnet that precedes a run of poems by Dudley North. It may or may not have been written by him: Thou that soe much thy liberty dost prize make thy account & recken up thy gaine & say wee sell content pleasure despise Reape melancholy buy woes & conquer paine Hees lazy who to purchase rarieties will ordinary laboures not susteine by suffernge men their names to eternize & glory thorough bleedinge woundes obteine Woes him thates of soe phelgmatick a stampe To like a sluggard & inglorious peace Ile leade my life in loves industrious lampe Where praise doth paines begett paines praise increase A thousand sighes are answered with a smile & one loves thought dooth world of woes beguile. (Hunt. MS 198.2, 57v) This poem does not appear in the printed works of North, The Forest of Varieties (1645), but both the Huntington manuscript and that printed volume have several poems by North that seem to attenuate the sonnet form in eighteen-, twenty-four, and twenty-six-line poems that have cross-rhymed quatrains and couplet conclusions.19 A unique seven-couplet poem by Francis Atkins seems to be broken into an octave and sestet, each marked by direct form of address to the mistress: To his Mistris. The courting period of a Spanish breath Fairest My praise will staine yow, yet my Quill Though worthles, is a subject to your will. The Ermine white & roses crimson dyes your cheeks, & stars are sphaered in your eys. Ope but your corall dores, & strangers feare Lest yow should tempt the sowle out at the eare. Suada lurks in your breath, to feast upon So sweet an aire, I’de turne Camaelion. Fair Saint Whilst such unmatch’d perfectiones I espie Yet usherd in with sweet humility.

340

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Me thinks the Muses & the graces too Conspire to glorifye their sex in You. If these pore thoughts of you unworthy be Your Courtesie assures, You’le pardon me. Atkins (Bod. MS Rawl. Poet. 142, f. 45)

Atkins was one of many Oxford academics who wrote and circulated poetry in first half of the seventeenth century. The allusion to Suada, the Roman goddess of persuasion, marks this as a university poem.20 Though it might not be regarded as a true sonnet, William Austin’s poem about the fundraising campaign to repair the steeple of St. Paul’s Cathedral might be seen as an interesting permutation of the Shakespearean sonnet form: When the kinge went to Paules. Paule why to Caesar dost thou now appeale or tell’st the Citty thy distresses. since thou with Christ name, did’st soe hardly deale, now a Just ruine, the oppresses. Taxe not the holy man, without desert, who smarte for Christ, in every quarter Saule was Christ[‘s] enemy, but Paule Convert adhear’d to Christ, and died his Marter. Paule was Convert, I graunte, & therfore say, Fitt to bee helpt, by Kinge & people, therfore gooe one, each man his mony pay and lend a hand, to build his steaple, Butt hears our feare, When Coyne & wee ar parted our mony twoe, like Paule, may bee Converted./. (St. Johns’ Col. Cam. MS U.26, p. 57)21 Although the poem is broken into three quatrains and a couplet, its meter before the regular iambic pentameter of the couplet alternates between five-foot and four-foot lines.

Sonnets in the Shakespearean Form Seventeenth-century sonnets usually were written in pentameter crossrhymed English or Shakespearean form. For example, in Margaret Bellasis’s collection, there is a lyric about the loss of a beloved:

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 341 Thou gladsome Spring, thou fresh youth of the yeere Of all sweet flowers, greene hearbs, new loves, the mother. Thou dost revolve, but my Joyes daies, soe cleare, So faire so fortunate, with the turne never. Thou oft return’st, but with that nought but this A grievous, dolefull memory of losse, wherein, my deerest treasure, perish’d is, O thou it is, even though I say, who was In former times soe beautifull, and faire. But I am not as I have beene before In others eyes, a deare, and pretious care. O bitter sweets of Love! which by much more In losse of Love, compaires deere Loves condition, Then never to have had yee in possession. (BL MS Add. 10309, f. 71) What is unusual about this poem is its structural division into units of four, five, and five lines while the rhyme scheme is the conventional Shakespearean one. This collection, associated with a female owner, has an unusually large number of poems in the sonnet form, including a copy of the most widely circulated of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Sonnet 2. In his manuscript, Sir John Perceval includes a love sonnet in the Shakespearean form that begins with a series of complimentary epithets: To his Mistris Beuties fair star: bright miror of this Earth Virtues protectresse, lively springe of witt; Wisedom’s rare type; thrice happy in thy birth; Perfections patronesse; trew honors habitt; Sith onley thou hast forc’t so greate desire In me to write, what wholy is thine owne whose dulled witts thy favours doth inspire that by my rule thy virtues should be showen, O leave not then to grace what thou hast graft the tender branches, which so timely bud when others faile thy blossom’s will be left And bringe foorth fruite that still myn do the good my travell will make challenge to the tree, though all the fruite shall still remaine to thee. (BL MS Add. 47111, f. 67) The three quatrains and couplet are clearly demarcated by the poem’s syntax. Percival’s manuscript,22 which has other sonnets, also has less polite poems about love and sex, such as the “To his unkind Mistris”

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(“Pox take yow Mistris Ile begon” [ff. 59v-60])23 and a mysogynistic poem about impossibles that may be based on Donne’s “Go and catch a falling star,” “On Women” (“Goe with thy rod the seas divide” [ff. 9v10]), a piece that is found in other manuscript and print documents.24 The Shakespearean form is used in another unique poem to address the topic of Justice: The censure of prudence. / concerning Justice Lo here the prime of Justice in her kynd whose fruites are such as carry blossomes greene, Lo here likewise the Dowry of the mynde proceeding from the cheife celestiall queene, Lo here, what is the rule of reasons right Lo here the palme of wisedomes bounty great Lo here the staff that moves directions sight, The best to please the meanest to intreate, Lo here the sword, lo here the garland gay Lo here the starr that glittereth right with rule. Lo here the plant a load-starr at this day Described from the ancient wisest schoole, Lo here the guide, a patterne that is suche, As all the world can not comend too muche./. (BL Egerton 2877, f. 93) The poem’s momentum carries through without interruption through the first three quatrains and the final couplet that summarizes the whole. This poem is followed in the manuscript by another piece of social criticism, “Seaven things that trouble a citty” (“The first is when the Judge corrupt, doth sitt in comon place” [f. 93]). An anonymous aphoristic sonnet in Shakespearean form about the supposedly ideal wife is found in four different manuscript compilations: A Wife Such as I have to my owne heart propounded And labour’d to obtaine as earths cheife good A wife made all of wishes, & compounded of choise ingredients both for minde & bloud. A mayde, yet willing to become a mother; Yong, yet full ripe; a faire one, & yet black The white side turn’d to mee black unto others Silent, yet one that noe good tongue doth lack. Rich only to contentment, not t’excess; Holy, striving with love her faith t’expresse Wise not to teach, but her owne wants to know

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 343 Well-borne yet not so high to sett mee low; Such whilst I fancied to myself a wife Freind I doe hear yow have her to the life. (Harv. MS Eng. 966.7, f. 18v)25 After two cross-rhymed quatrains, this poem has three couplets, a rather unusual version of the Shakespearean form. There are many poems scattered throughout the manuscript collections of the period on the topic of the good wife. Some of them set forth a standard for wifely behavior most women are criticized for not meeting. The most elaborate poem on this theme is, of course, Sir Thomas Overbury’s long didactic poem, “The Wife.” Since John Benson, in his 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s poetry, set the example of merging quatorzains to form larger units of up to fivesonnets, it is not surprising to find a double sonnet, such as the unique one in Folger MS V.a.339: Befor that antient time that man & wife Joynd in contracted union & devotion betweene them was a stout & doubtfull strife which of the twaine should make the first loves motion yet for the world should not be desolate & of their strife to make an end intyre the Gods them selves theire cause to arbitrate gave women beauty & to man desire, so that although (in modesty of thought) women should not be made the first demaunders yet from theire beauties might such meanes be wrought that men might be induced to be no straungers and thus we men first undertake to woo so that the cause is still deriv’d from you./ ‘Tis questionlesse (mine honour’d mistris) beauties not given to you, desire to us we to abuse your beauties happinesse or you to frustrat our desires thus If we should hould your beauties in disdayne or you reward our loves with discontent then our desire was given us in vaine & you unworthy beauties ornament for beauty is made to teach, desire to move if such an object then be set to view as is your selfe the efficient Cause of love let me be blamelesse then in lovinge you for since your beauty first doth dare the fielde nedes must desire then strike to make you yeeld. (f. 198)

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Thematically this unique poem is seamless, making female beauty an Aristotelian efficient cause of male desire. It might be compared to the sonnet and answer-poem set in which Shakespeare’s Sonnet 106 is merged with a poem by the Earl of Pembroke and titled “On his Mistress Beauty.”26 The combination of sonnet and answer poem in the same form (both unique) is found in Hunt. MS HM 198.2: A Sonnett which I made to a friend being sick of sore eyes/ I greive but wonder not at thee sharpe paine for seatinge of thie selfe in those deare eyes thou couldst not in the world have mett a Prize that in so little doth so much conteyne But see thou doe not there to longe remaine for if thou quitt the sight, that in them lies which now both them, and thee so beautifies thie selfe wilt suffer losse instede of gaine And if thou be ambitious to possesse the Treasure of his eyes, thy way wilbe to Dwell in mine, and so thou shalt expresse both much more wisedome, and lesse crueltie for he and I part not, & so from this Tower of mine eyes, thou maist discover his. An Answere which I made in his Person, for he was sick, Although halfe blind I cannot chuse but see those sparks of Love, that rise from thie faire min[de] and make ^the^ to thie worthles friend, so kinde As to invite his paine to ceaze on thee. but in this body sicke my soule is free and scornes to save mine eyes from beinge bl[ind] upon the price of being so unkinde as on thie bondage to build Libertie. And if my Paine whom thou hast spake so fa[ire] should take thine Offer, and resolve to goe from this darke prison, to that Pallas rare It must aske leave, & I would still say noe,

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 345 To see my paine in thee would break my h[art] It costes me lesse to feele mine owne eyes [part] (Hunt. MS HM 198.2, f. 93v) The strange thing about this poem-and-answer set is that both pieces were, as the title to the second indicates, written by the same person. Presumably this act of friendship and sympathy was designed for relationship of equals. In a collection that includes many of his own compositions, John Ramsay has a unique sonnet with a separate appended couplet: To the Fayrest A Sonnett,/ In Eandem dominae suae./ A: B: E. E: D: Surveyinge with a curious serchinge eye Montanus./ my loves sweete feature & her comly grace to Flora me seemde a garden was her Majestye where many fragrant flowers decke the place Her lipps like Gillyflowers in a race her ruddy cheekes like roses sweete did smell her snowey browes like Bellamours enchact her lovlye eyes like Pinkes becomes her well Her bosomes like a Strawberrye bedd in smell her Ivorye necke like Cullambines in showe her brestes like lillyes eare their leaves be fell her Nipples like younge Jessamynes in rowe Theise dayntye flowers give a pleasant sent But her sweete selfe above them all outwent. O thereofore blest & treble blest weare hee that might enjoye soe faire a soule as shee. By him that must love or not live. Poore, J[ohn] R[amsey]. (Bod. MS Douce 280, f. 35)27 Ramsey’s fondness for Spenser’s poetry comes through in this blazon, which, like Spenser’s Amoretti sonnets, has a reduced number of interlocking rhymes (ababbcbccdcdee). The poem, like some other sonnets, also has a two-line coda. Some of the sonnets found in seventeenth-century pre-Restoration manuscripts have unusual rhyme schemes. For example, in Margaret Bellasis’s collection one complaint to love repeats the initial rhyme sound throughout the poem (abbaaccaaddaaa): As men < > ^in^ Debt, to shunne Melanchollie Shun their accounts; & as their meanes doe cease

346

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Their profuse prodigal’tie, they increase: O Love through the in such a state am I. Thou dost waste my strength, and the miserie Thou’lt bring me too I dare not think upon Nor dare resist the; not yet make my mone, Why doe I from an inbred Modestie, Shun, by telling it to finde Remedie Shall I because they that love not doe say They doe; for-sweare my selfe that tother way. Dissemble like a Stoick, or belie Sound parts, rather then confesse love & dye. Through mine owne rather, then her crueltie. (BL MS Add. 10309, f. 100r-v)

Another unique sonnet from the same collection repeats the first rhyme through three quatrains: My hart thinking (for once it was soe fond) It selfe as hard as yours, which it did joine To write love in yours, as yours had in mine. But proud like glasse against a Diamond My too-presuming hart his softnesse found. And what it strove upon your hart to make The same impression did still deeper take. An harder hart, or stone cannot be found And I through love, from wishing it am bound But say, ‘t were possible to meet a hart, That could play yours, and made yours play my part, Remembring mine youl’d feele a double wound. And that, that hart was better finde itt true wheron you wrought, then that which wrought on you. (BL MS Add. 10309, f. 65r-v) This love complaint combines the trope of the hard-hearted mistress with the conceit of writing with a diamond on glass, a medium occasionally used for love poetry, as in Donne’s “A Valediction of my name in the Window.” A unique love-complaint in which the lover-speaker compares himself to a clock has an unusual rhyme scheme (ababcdcdeefgfg), inserting a rhymed couplet before a final cross-rhymed quatrain:28

I am become a clock by cupids powre Furye, desyre, and secret woonds within They are my iron wheeles to know the howre

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 347 Who list myne eyes to marke, may dayes time wyn My teares supplye the bell, love beates the pawse Who full of crotchett29 measures, as shee will Now slow then fast, so with uncertayne lawes She mars my frame, and makes my clock goe ill I would my deare this antique would correct And sett my plummetts, wheles, and cordes direct Butt coye and nice shee cryes I crave to much And leaves me thus disordred in her sight Sayes for the worlde he[r] finger must nott touch The needle of my watch to sett itt righte (BL MS Egerton 2230, f. 21) The close interest in the working of a clock—“iron wheeles,” “the bell,” “beates the pawse,” “plummetts, wheles, and cordes”—takes attention away from the topic of love. The speaker's mistress is portrayed as engaging in clock repair, though, switching the metaphor somewhat, she states that “her finger must nott touch / The needles of my watch to sett it righte,” perhaps giving a bawdy twist to the metaphorizing. This poem is found in a verse miscellany which has the ownership mark “E Libris Richard Glovero pharmacopol. Londinese pertinantibus” and the date 1638, putting it a an urban middle-class environment.30

The Various Uses of the Sonnet The interesting thing about sonnets after the Elizabethan sonnet craze, which include both secular (typically amorous or complementary) verse and religious poems, is that many were put to the same uses they had before English sonnet sequences flourished. Lisle Cecil John, in his classic study of English sonneteering, notes that, before Sidney and the sonnet collections of the 1590s, sonnets were used as epitaphs, as dedicatory verse, as commendatory verse, as inset poems in romances and dramas, as didactic verse, as devotional or religious verse, as songs for musical accompaniment, as prologues or epilogues to plays, and as verse epistles.31 These uses continued through the period and into the seventeenth-century—for example, in Christopher Brooke’s poem “To his Frend the Author, upon his Poem,” which was prefaced to William Browne of Tavistock’s Britannia’s Pastorals (1616, sig. A4v). In a recent essay, R. S. White observes that, after 1609, “sonnets survived, and by dispensing with the need for a sequence, writers opened up a new opportunity for the ‘occasional’ sonnet. As an indirect consequence, love and fame, the subjects that had dominated the form since Petrarch, were no longer taken for granted. Politics, scenery, moods, special occasions and other topics could act as starting-points and justifications for sonnets.”32

348

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript

In some seventeenth-century collections, there are, of course, love sonnets on traditional topics. An anonymous sonnet “Against Melancholly,” spoken by a despairing lover, is preserved in three different collections: Against Melancholly Mother of night, & all sad thoughtes that Love Palpable darknes ‘bove the blessed light Farre far, or far thy loathed presence move From the sweet minde of her sweetest wight That ever Poett prais’d, or paynter drewe, And if a seat, as black as is thy face, Thou doest desire to see, O then come viewe My breast for thee the saddest, fittest place Att thy Sable Alter in a dolefull mood Cares feares & pensive lookes I’le offer thee Sighes teares & groanes with all the mourning brood That in thy sullen Trayne attend on thee: O quench not then those lightes whose holy fire Thawes cold despaire, and freezes hott desire (Hunt. MS HM 172, f. 15)33 Peter Calfe’s compilation, which contains several true sonnets, has two sonnets in a row on conventional love themes. The first expresses the lover’s response to parting and separation: A Sonnett Must you needes goe? hard heart necessitie, Injurious breaker of the stricktest law ore the proudst Emperours usurping awe; Tyrant of love, foe to civilitie curs’d be thy force, and doom’d thy liberty; Let all the actions by thy strength effected (though of desert) bee of true fame neglected; let all thy Vertues turne to infamie, since the rash Violence of thy rude hand hath robd my soules best halfe, and torne my heart causing my selfe thus from my selfe to part; yet my true love, which thy great power withstand retaines her presence still whom thou doest sever, for in my heart tis deepely carved Ever. (BL MS Harley 6918, f. 22)

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 349 The second is a sonnet/lover’s complaint: A Sonnet Ah gentle winde if ere thou didst suspire for love, doe this good office for my sake, under thy winges their chastest sighes to take, sighes are small carriage, light and hott as fire; carry them safe, and softly soaring nigh her, powre them between her breasts that sistring make snow-balls that staine the white of purest flake; This done steale quaintly as thou flyest by her the accents of her voice coelestiall so shall thy labour bee a pretious hire; And since thy breath can quench and kindle all Doe me this favour, the request is small Into her Scythian heart new heate inspire or slacke the hott flames of my old desire. (BL MS Harley 6918, f. 22r-v)34 After another love poem not in sonnet form, “On his mistris” (“Hermes flew downe from heaven with hue and crye” [f. 22v]),35 the Calfe manuscript continues with another love sonnet: A Sonnet Princes which by the right of true Succession, peaceably Enter on a quiet land must raine their people with a gentle hand, Voyding the least suspect of foull oppression; But they that make their strength their chiefe profession and by fierce warres obtaine a bloudy Crowne, must by their sword maintaine their good renowne; And by continued force make their progression; the self same Art that gets must still preserve; Thou by thy vertues pure, and thy perfection with curteous usage, and demeanour Sweete, my heart untoucht before, invit’st to serve, and thus continue still, that my affection growing with thy deserts may never fleete. (BL MS Harley 6918, ff. 22v-23) Merging the Italian and the Shakespearean sonnet forms, this poem has two quatrains (in which the initial rhyme is repeated) and two tercets. Its polite praise of its addressee’s virtue may indicate that this piece is a poem of complement to a socially superior woman.

350

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript

There is an apparently unique copy of a sonnet about a mistress’s illness or misfortune in Hugh Cholmley’s compilation: Would’e thou from fortunes injuries werte free that she thy sacred beauties might not towch no more then thunder strikes the Laurell tree then I perhaps should not have lov’de so much for bee it that thy worth the more appeares through thy unworthy wrongs and cruell fate or that loves Sympathy the more e^n^deares thy beauties like loves self unfortunate or that soft pity and relentfull greife on lovely subjects plac’t to Love converts, or that my thoughts despayring of releife their vowes and wishes all to thee impart. So much my sad sowle suffers in thy ille would thou wert happy, though I lov’d thee still. (Harv. MS 703, p. 31)36 In Cholmley’s manuscript, which Jerome de Groot identifies as “a fine example of a family coterie compilation,” this poem illustrates the socially occasional character of most early-modern English verse.37 This particular sonnet functions like a modern “Get Well” card. The sonnet form is used by another anonymous writer to perform a conventional blazon of his mistress’s beauty: Sonnet Sweet month that send’st a musky-rosed breath Fountaine of nectar & delightfull balme Eyes cloudy-clear, smile-frowning, calmy stormy-calme Whose every glance darts me living-death Brows bending quaintly your round Ebony arkes: Smiles that when Venus sooner Mars besots Locks more than golden curl’d in curious knots Where in close ambush wanton Cupid lurkes Grace angell-like, faire forehead, smoth & high, Pure white that dim’st the lillies of the vale Vermilion rose, that makes Aurora pale, Rare spirit to rule this beautious empery If in your face divine effects I view Ah who can blame me if I worship you? (BL MS Harley 3511, f. 74v)

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 351 A rare love sonnet complaining about the pains of absence from the beloved is found in a British Library manuscript from the 1630s: Wonder of Beautie Goddess of my sence You that have taught my soule, to love aright You in whose limbs are natures chiefe expence, fitt instruments to serve your matchless spright; If ever you have felt the Miserie of beeing banish’t from your best desier: By absence Time, or fortunes tiranny, stervingo for cold, and yet denied the fier:

o

dying

Deare Mistris pittye then the like effectes The which in me your absence makes to flowe And hast theire ebb by your devine aspect, In which the pleasure of my life doth grow: Staye not to long for though it seeme a wonder You keepe my bodie and my soule assunder:/ Finis (BL MS Lansdowne 740, f. 101)38 Following this poem in BL MS Lansdowne 740 is unique conventional love sonnet/epistle, transcribed, like it, to leave spaces between quatrains and before the couplet: Faire eies doe not thinke scorne to reed of Love. that to your eies durst never it presume since absence those sweet wonders do remove that nourish thoughts, yet sence, and wordes consume. This makes my pen more hardie then my tonnge free from my feare, yett feeling my desire, to utter that I have conceald soe long, by doing what you did your self requier. Beleeve not him whom love hath lefte so wise, as to have powre his owne tale for to tell, for childrenes greefes do yeld the Loudest cries, and cold desiers may be expressed well. In well tould Love most often falshood lies but pittie him, that onlie sighes, and dies Finis (BL MS Lansdowne 740, f. 101)

352

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript

In Richard Glover’s manuscript, following a song by Thomas Campion (“Though your strangeness fret my heart” [f. 57]), a unique conventional love sonnet (metapoetically) complains about the lover’s inability to use words to express his love: In vayne doe wee that love indeede desyre Our inward greifes to others to declare Wherefore in silence I conceale the fyre Whose flames supprest the more enraged are, For should I say my hart transfixed weare With the quick glance of her sharpe-pointed eye, Or that my soule extracted through myne eare By her Coelestiall voyces harmonye, Or that I wish and want and hope, and feare And love, and lack, and languish in decay’ And all my dayes in doubt, and dollor weare All this is true and more, yet all I say Is nothing for when words have done there best I feele a touch that cannot bee exprest: (BL MS Egerton 2230, f. 58) This poem precedes another unique love poem of thirty-seven lines, “Cease fond desire thou laborest in vain” (f. 58v) and the popular lyric by Joshua Sylvester, “Beware fair mistress of musky courtiers’ oaths” (f. 59v). Another love sonnet in BL MS Egerton 2230 is a persuasion to love set in a situation of erotic intimacy in which the importunate lover argues, like the speaker of many of Donne’s love elegies and lyrics, for sexual consummation: If it be true that when our births wee take The starrs and planetts which are seene to raigne Our ends and actions doe decipher playne And range oure course to th’influence which they make Why then my deere, when I approach thy brest And press it fayre with kind, and sweete embrace, Thinking to coole myne owne, that burnes apace, Why then unkind doe you oppose the rest? For if by fate I bee not farther ledd What neede you feare me in your naked bed, I cannot doe, what is not in my starrs But if they will, how dare you once beegin To force theire high decrees, and make such wars Gainst heaven, love, and fate, which bring me in: (BL MS Egerton 2230, f. 55v)

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 353 This poem uses the polite sonnet decorum in a situation of amorous wooing that is dramatized with erotic realism in other seventeenthcentury love lyrics. Among a large group of apparently unique poems in a small early Jacobean miscellany of verse and prose, written, according to Robert Krueger, “for someone at court” by a “compiler who seems to have access to poems and court entertainments not found in other manuscripts,”39 there is a unique Shakespearean sonnet that expresses a disdained lover’s desire for his mistress to reciprocate his love: O fy desire why dost thou still intise the love of hir who doth thee still disdaine what will no warninge nor advise make thee to feare nor yet thee to refraine But needs thou must in folly shew thi skill & sett thy pleasinge toyes to pearse hir hart who hath already felt the wounde so ill as now I feele to taste againe thy smart. But when of late I laid me downe to rest yet heavy sleepe could not once touch mine eye upon a bedd that fancy liked best Whereon slumbring laid & dreamt a dreame to hy But what it was as yet you shall not know Untill more love in greater sort thou show (BL MS Add. 22601, f. 86v) The unique sonnet that follows alludes to the mistress’s complicated response to the lover’s plea: Oh sweete desire that sweetly dost intice that hart to love that never ^will^ disdayn thee thou livst in me & I by thine advise in me still live if so thou wilt not paine ^me^ She saies thou shewste thi skill in follies waies & sweares hir hart, is wounded with thi toyes I feele no smart, but grow by thy delaies nor any grief when thou dost proffer joyes. She felt thi wound, then layd hir downe to rest & take a napp not thinking to have slept She had a dreame that pleasd hir fancy best & yet scarse pleasd because too hye it crept But what it was she swore I should not know Unles more love in greater sort I show. (BL MS Add. 22601, ff. 86v-87)

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript

The mistress is moved by his appeals, but the lover can’t figure out what she wants or what he should do, though he believes he should continue his wooing. Both sonnets are part of a long series of amorous poems in an early seventeenth-century collection.40 The Inns-of-Court poet Nicholas Hare, having written a Petrarchan sonnet while a student at Cambridge, however, composed a sonnet that is a less-polite erotic solicitation: When by thee carlesse I devisinge sitt, And, to deceave the summers howers, mentayne manie an Idle purpose with my witt, Perhaps, for want of other talke, I fayne A longinge for a kisse, noe deadly Sinne, To which thou dost consent assoone as I & when I end art readie to beginne Soe plentifull in honest Libertie: But when from thence I higher would expire, (Or rather would descend, as change desiringe), Thou art as coold as I am full of fire & leavst mee there upon my Passions tyringe as thou giv’st appetite, give it means to wast, & be not free att all, or bee lesse chast. Finis (Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50, f. 116r-v)41 This is a more direct persuasion to love than is usually found in the sonnet tradition, except, perhaps, in some of Sidney’s sonnets. Another sonnet distinguishes love and lust, de-idealizing the kind of love celebrated in the sonnet tradition: It fell out, dry-bond Love & Back-strong Lust beinge at odds appeale both to be tride at beauties barre imploring sentence Just theire long debated quarell to decide first love as plaintife shewes the naked truth & pleades his title & his Inocence then Lust replies, a tall and sprightly youth first tels his tale then puts in evidence when pro et contra both had done their best the standers by impanneld on the case awarde to Lust loves propper interest & yet the Judge with favour makes his clause he shall become tenant by courtesie and sometimes use what love should occupie (Folger MS V.a.339, f. 198)

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 355 The legal language of this piece suggests that, like Donne’s erotic elegies, it might have originated in the environment of the Inns of Court. Perhaps following the example of the devotional poetry of the era, a unique literarily self-conscious poem in the Skipwith manuscript uses religious language to express rejection in love as analogous to spiritual rejection: Madam God knowes my power is lymited soe is my Penn, that neither it nor I may doe or speake of things prohibited therefore accept what in my power doth lye Hee that doth swaye the Scepter of the Worlde and knowes the secretts of the Closest harts doth knowe howe often I have hurld Sighs, Prayers, and vowes, to him the kinge of kings Onely for this and for noe other cause to have the happines for to expresse howe farr my reverence all my passion awes which makes mee dwell in silente wretchenes But for my sinnes my prayers are rejected which makes mee both in heaven and earth neglected (BL MS Add. 25707, f. 177) Like many of Donne’s verse epistles, this poem employs the sonnet form for a poetry of complement addressed to a socially superior woman.42 In Peter Calfe’s collection there is also a rare sonnet that uses religious imagery to complain about ill treatment in love: To his Cruell Mistris Hard hearted faire if thou wilt not consent alone to place me thine in thy proud eye yet let thy grace so farre at length relent that I may serve thee as a Votary: And I professe never was holy Fryar halfe to religious in his vestry rytes as I will bee in serving thy desire and keeping vigill to thy true delights: My Hymnes shallbe the praises of that pitty and my morne matins tune to my owne moane,

356

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Thy Sacred name shall be my Evensongs Ditty And all my orisons to thee alone; and I will fast from Every love but thee And only pray that thou wilt pitty mee. (BL MS Harley 6918, ff. 89v-90)43

Palinodes and Other Anti-Love Poems Some sonnets, perhaps reacting against the Petrarchan or courtly sensibility underlying sonnet sequences and an earlier kind of love poetry, are palinodes or anti-love poems (though this mode is found also in sonnet collections to express the lover’s frustrations). Alistair Fowler calls these “antisonnets.”44 One literarily self-conscious sonnet uses references to mythological and other historical figures to build up a dignified and heroic context only to conclude with mockery of May-December amorous pairings:

Daedalus. There hath been one that Strove gainst natures powre Like fethered foule to cutt the Emptie ayre Hercules. and one that Liv’d, and yett from Plutoe’s bowre Did fetch by force Sicilia’s ravisht faire Medea. There hath been one that did recall the daies of withered Age, and staied the destinyes Columbus And one that hath out-sailed in uncouth seas the Markes of great Alcides Victories Thessala maga There hath beene one hath forc’d the grave and hellto render upp theyr dead. And one hath beene [Daniel] unhurt that did remaine with Lions fell. All these have been, but Man hath never seene Nor heaven’s broad eye did ever yett discover A Beautious Dame, Doate on A Grayberd Lover Finis (BL MS Lansdowne 740, f. 130) In a period in which (usually upper-class) marriages were arranged between older men and younger women, this poem regards such activity as absurd. A unique sonnet found in the Conway Papers, aggressively demythologizes love:

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 357 Sonnett Love is not blind but I, that doe direct My mynd through wayes of so much misery Nether is hee a child but in effect Tis I, at once who feare, hope, laugh and cry. His flames are nought, but my too hot desires His wings my soaring thoughts that never rest And who the sharpenes of his darts admires Interprets fals his owne resistles brest Nor did his feeble chayns eare ty a hart That did not yeeld before a blow was strooke Though some whose Mistris scornd his smal desart Swore it was Cupids ^doome^ and so mistooke For my part Ime resolvd that hee that can Thinke him a God, is himselfe lesse then Man. (BL MS Add. 23229, f. 122v) The poem strips from love the pretty metaphorizing and mythologizing that project human behavior onto an external screen and exculpate the individual desiring subject. The kind of psychological realism practiced in love poetry by Donne and Shakespeare and by others responding to the Ovidian, rather than the Petrarchan, tradition, changed the way amorous verse got written and the expectations one might have had of the sonnet form. An apparently unique copy of a sonnet in Nicholas Burghe’s collection reads through its three quatrains like a palinode, but its couplet reasserts love: Tongue playe thy parte, to serve thy Mistris turne Dissemble still, that none may know thy minde Conceale the heate, wherin I dayly burne seeme most to hate, whear most I would bee kinde Call love a toy: unfitt for those are wise A Laborinth, whearin I will not come Deluding shewes which doe deceave myne eyes Like rotten bones Inclosed in richest tombe Call Love hime selfe A Bastard and a foole A murtherrer of all that tast his baites and tell the world hee keeps a Common Schole of Lyes, of fraud, or errours & deceipts but thou my harte can’st give my tongue the lye Thou know’st I love & shall doe till I dye Finis (Bod. MS Ash. 38, pp. 143–44)

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript

Like that of many sonnet collections, including Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella, the debate between passionate and reasonable attitudes is here a psychological one within the lover.

Sonnets as Verse Epistles and Poems of Complement Sonnets as verse epistles to friends or patrons are preserved in various manuscript documents. In one example, entitled “A sonnett to cover myne Epistles taile peece,” the quatorzain is seen as an epistolary appendage, after which the author noted: “Deare friend, and there’s an end.” The colloquial, comic diction of the poem is unusual, especially given the conventional aureate style of sonneteering: o Lo I the man45 whome Fates have serv’d on Soppso bread soaked in liquid with two splay foote couples in the edge of night, Am made a spectacle of Meweso and Moppso, ogulls osimpletons While reason butters all my ribs with spight. Yet to my Cyennis, crown’d with frigid Zones o Doth grinn like Lodgicke when she hath the squirto diarrhea Soe all my reasons rankle in my bones, While for the pox, I sweat witt through my shirt. The time hath bin when my fur’d numbers cann Like Hauks that sing the sack of Troy, in June; But now my Scull is made a dripping pann, o Where grimm Minerva scummerso out of tune: scours The sweetnes of my lines then, I suppose Will draw your eares to vomitt in your Nose. (Bod. MS Ash. 36/37, f. 140) 46

“Sopps,” “Mewes and Mopps,” “squirt,” “scummers,” and vomit” are not words one expects to find in polite sonnets, but they might have amused a friend. The Herbert family papers contain an apparently unique copy of a sonnet-epistle “To Dianas earthly Deputesse & my Worthy Sister Mistris Jane Carye”:47 When daies cleare light his compast course hath runne his sisters fainter beames on Earth doe cheere, So you his Sister as day Moone appeare, But your faire Brother is to mee the Sunne You are my next belov’d, my second frend, for when my Phoebus absence makes it night,

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 359 from you (my Phebe) shines my second light While to th’Antipodes his beames doe bend, you Luna-like unspotted, chast, divine, Hee like to sol, cleare sighted, Constant, free, Hee shone on Sicily, you destind bee t’illume ore now obscured Palestine, My first was consecrated to Apollo, an offring to Diana now shall follow. (Nat’l Lib. of Wales MS E 3/3 [f.1]) While there are verse epistles by a brother to a sister, this is an unusual relationship to be portrayed in the sonnet tradition. One manuscript connected with Oxford University contains Richard Fanshawe’s sonnet “Of the most beautiful Sisters rowed upon the Trent: under the allegorie of swans,” a poem that seems to have been written as polite complement: Two stately swans sayle downe the Trent I saw (Like spotlesse Ermynes charg’d on silver feild) to which the Doves which Venus chariot drawe And Venus selfe, must Beautyes Scepter yeild Jove was not halfe so white when he was one And courted Leda, in a snowy plume Nor ever such a taking shape putt on of all which Love compell’d him to assume Faire kinne of Phaeton, who set on fyre The World, why doe yee so delight in floods And bridling in a Thousande hearts desire Quench his soft moovings with your mayden bloods Ah! since so many dwell in flames for you Leave to be swans: turne salamanders48 too (Hunt. MS 116, p. 162)49 Though printed in a modern edition of Fanshawe’s poems, this piece appears to have survived in only one manuscript copy. Sonnets were written to social superiors to maintain relationships of patronage and clientage. Some love sonnets may be poems of complement written for a socially superior woman. A good example of this is a poem possibly written by Alexander Gill: Upon Mistris Eliz: Noell./ Endeavouring to obey upon high behest Lett my unlearned Muse, deare Lady, finde In your fayre patronage an Interest

360

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript Zealous ^to^ serve th’appoyntmente of your mynde. And though you may some richer penn atchive Befitting your soe ^rich^ and noble Birth Enricht with virtues: Yet ^still^ I shall strive To future ages to enroll your worth Holding my selfe contented (as beeseemes) Not now to undertake soe great a taske O no; my slender poesie now deemes Enough if here it may acceptance finde aske Lett my rude soyle hereafter more abundance yeild Lett your sweet favour take the fruites of barren feild. By a true honorer of your Virtues A[lexander]: G[ill?] (Folger V.a.262 p. 142)

This poem, breaking the sonnet form, concludes with a hexameter couplet. A love poem found in two British Library manuscripts similarly speaks a language of deference: Though you are best, yet give me leave to see Better then you; not that my eyes Compare with your sharpe sight; or that your simmetry Is to be matcht; but only that mine are your eyes beholders; Doe not envy mee This happynesse, since all respects that barr you the like, proove you the same, such beauty Shyning in you, brightens but my best starre And yet Contentes me, since my borrowed light proceeds from thence, whence if affliction came It should be wellcome; Honor doeth invite all noble heartes to burne in such a flame Where fame shall make theire memories so great That loves cleere light will Countervaile his heat.50 (BL MS Harley 1221, f. 92)51 New Year’s greetings and gift-giving created a regular occasion for the poetry of complement. One Shakespearean sonnet, positioned between two poems by Simon Butterix52 in Nicholas Burge’s collection, is titled “A new-years giuft”: Suppose in this, to you I here Commend The rarest Perle the Orient ere brought forth And Courtier-like riche massye plate I send with such a Jewell bears a dukedoms worth

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 361 Suppose each line A Goulden Carquenetto

o

an ornamerntal collar or necklace

And every Inky spotted letter here A Luster-Casting-sparkeling Diamond, sett And each one prized at a million weare Suppose that I the whole Pawne up have brought o And on this paper place it on a Reweo row All true by stronge Imagination wrought Then have I given you simple wealth I trowe That for a guyft, I boldly say thus much Great Caesar nere gave Cleopatra Such Finis (Bod. MS Ash. 38, p. 138) The gap between the speaker’s socioeconomic position and that of his wealthy addressee is quite visible. The structure of the sonnet’s three quatrains and couplet is quite clear.

Funerary Sonnets One sonnet serving as an epitaph was copied into a manuscript anthology from a memorial stone in a church:

The epitaph of Eliz. Moodie

upon a black marble in the body of the Ch[urch] at Rision Weep not for she was born unto a grave, Yet like a well bred Child she came & went When her Coelestiall father wou’d It have Dyed in the year 1617 As if she had been on an Errand sent. The life she liv’d was honest, plain & good With Confidence of her Redeemer’s power And for her death Neighbours deploring stood And all her friends bewail’d her fatall hour But she bad cease for Death was but a door To a more happy life which they shou’d see When their turns came altho’ she went before And Only did to Natures Course agree Therefore Ye lookers on, be sure of this She who Dyes well lives in Eternall Bliss. (BL MS Harley 7332, f. 256v)53 Like most epitaphs (which are not usually in sonnet form), this poem is both commemorative and didactic. The informational texts to the right

362

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript

of the epitaph were entered in another hand and ink. The main scribe might have done this at a date later than the original entry of the poem into the manuscript, or someone else might have added the information about the poem and its source. In Peter Calfe’s collection there is a sonnet elegy: my To Deare deceased friends my Lo: P: H: La: P E:

To

How much I loved yee whilst yee lived, heav’n and yee know, by dying wee have gott the Start goe make us Equall, come Death dissolve that heart They only lived, and Joyed in their command What foole desires to live, and will withstand the way, Since Justly through their ill deserts they loose the name of friends, that long apart doe keepe: oh I have sought what sea, and land, and all that men can thinke can give, and finde who once hath lost a friend he dearely loved In vaine doth seeke a Balme his wounde minde to heale, Sorrowes like Rockes stand unremoved; Then Since to force this passage is noe Sinne When this flesh falls, my Joyes againe beginne. (BL MS Harley 6918, f. 6r-v) This poem appears in one other surviving manuscript (BL MS Add. 58215, f. 75v), which was compiled by Henry King’s amanuensis, Thomas Manne. In this document, there is also a unique elegiac sonnet for the same individuals, “To the same two partner Angells” (“Crown’d with that virgins feet. Since both yee sitt” [ff. 75v-76]).

Polemical and Didactic Sonnets Some fugitive sonnets deal with contemporary religious conflict. In one of the manuscripts associated with the Inns of Court, there is a Protestant anti-Catholic sonnet preceded by a philological note: {Hebrew} {Hight {Greeke} {Strenght Roma in {Latine} signifieth {Love (if it be read / backwarde) {English} {Rome or place Fower tounges like Trumpetts Rome do sound thy name 1 2 in Hebrew thou arte Height, in Greeke a Powre 3 4 and Love in Latine, and Place in our;

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 363 Fowre squares of hundred yeares: doe fit the same 1 the firste is Height exalted Christe his name 2 the next in Strength augmented worldly powre 3 The third Gods Love caste Backward on the Flowre 4 The fourth in empty Place hath shewd thy shame and now, fowre wayes thou woldst thy faulte conceale 1 2 with scryptures upper Height and Strenght of schooles 3 4 and shew of Zeale and Rome the head of fooles 1 2 3 To Height wants grownd, to Reason truth, to Zeale 4 Science; & Rome conteyneth now no grace 1 2 3 4 Thy Height of Strenght is backward Love of Place. (BL MS Add. 25303, f. 110v)54 Although the rhyme scheme follows that of the Shakespearean model, the break on the page divides the poem into two seven-line units. This piece is followed by some Protestant polemical prose.

Religious Sonnets Especially since Donne, Southwell, and Herbert wrote masterful religious sonnets, and poets imitated their example in using the form for devotional verse.55 Anthony Petti has identified twenty-nine religious sonnets in Huntington MS HM 198.2 (ff. 88–95) by the Catholic convert, Sir Toby Matthew.56 He notes that these poems are in two groups, one hagiographical, the other personal. They serve as religiopolitcal oppositional texts, praising the saints and the Virgin and portraying Catholic continental exile sympathetically. The Catholic Constance Aston-Fowler’s personal collection of verse (Hunt. MS HM 904) has some sonnets by Richard Fanshawe (pp. 141 and 148) and her father Sir Walter Aston (p. 146).57 Sometimes religious sonnets were poems translated from foreign texts: Guillaume Coatalen has pointed out that, in a manuscript probably transcribed in the 1620s, BL MS Add. 10312, an English poet presents translations of eighteen of Philippe Desportes’ Sonnets spirutuels among his own quatorzains.58

364

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript

A religious sonnet attributed to Richard Sackville, third earl of Dorset (to whom Donne sent some of his Holy Sonnets),59 is found in two British Library collections: Looke backe to live: Though righteous Lots companion lost her life by looking backe through curiositie sodome inflamed with lust, inflamed to see, or was it unbeleefe that sinne so rife, obedience highest vertue of a wife; what thou forbadst her Lord I begg of thee for my Sicke Soule the only Remedie, Where faith Submitts, there Reason quits the strife; Backe to my Sinnes Lord let me turne my face oh let their loathednesse affright me soe with horrour of their guilt that I noe place but to thy Sonne my Saviour have to goe; Who bowed the heavens, and flesh upon him tooke, Lord heare my suite, oh write me in thy booke. (BL MS Harley 6917, f. 103)60 The twist on the story of Lot’s wife is only one of its many historical permutations.61

Conclusion Given the strong influence of the verse of Donne and Jonson, the latter of whom claimed that he first composed in prose, then turned what he wrote into verse, tetrameter and pentameter couplets or various song forms were the dominant modes of versification in the seventeenth-century. Nevertheless, the sonnet did not die. Apart from George Herbert’s poems in the sonnet form,62 the latter immersed in the prosodically varied collection that appeared in print as The Temple (1633), the only major poet to take up sonneteering was John Milton. Of course, other, lesser, writers occasionally used quatorzains for various purposes. Their pieces, surviving often in rare or unique copies, are found in the numerous manuscript poetical anthologies, miscellanies, and composite documents of the period, sometimes attached to their initials or names, but frequently, like other pieces in such collections, as anonymous. Some printed volumes, such as The Card of Courtship (1653),63 The Harmony of the Muses (1654),64 Wits Interpreter (1655),65 and Poems, Written by … William Earl of Pembroke … [and] Sir Benjamin Rudyerd (1660),66 print or reprint a few sonnets written earlier, but the manuscript remains of the period contain more examples of the form. When we find such fugitive pieces, they are a

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 365 surprise, and we are tempted to treat them as anachronistic productions, but they belong to the complex history of lyric poetry, which includes the steady, if fluctuating, composition of sonnets.

Notes 1 In “‘Love is not love’: Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences and the Social Order,” ELH 49 (1982): 396–428, I argue that the change of monarchs was a major cause in the decline in the popularity of amorous sonnet sequences. Although James I himself, in his early published work, The Essayes of A Prentise, in the Divine Art of Poesie (Edinburgh, 1584), published a series of twelve sonnets (and the work itself has five commendatory poems in the sonnet form), the literary pieces addressed or dedicated to him during his English reign were in other poetic forms. Other post-Elizabethan Scottish poets, however, such as William Drummond of Hawthornden and Sir Robert Ayton continued to write and publish sonnets: Drummond’ Poems (1614) has some seventyseven sonnets and Ayton wrote some twenty sonnets (see The English and Latin Poems of Sir Robert Ayton, ed. Charles B. Gullans [Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons Ltd., 1963], 109, 160–67, 169–70, 172–74). 2 “Pamphilia to Amphilanthus” in The Countess of Mountgomeries Urania (1621). Ilona Bell (ed.), Pamphilia and Amphilanthus in Manuscript and Print (Toronto, Canada: The Iter Press and Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2017), 12, suggests that Wroth wrote the poems before her arranged marriage to Sir Robert Wroth in 1604. 3 Fulke Greville’s sonnet collection, Caelica, was published as part of Certaine Learned and Elegant Workes of the Right Honorable Fulke Lord Brooke (1633). 4 Drayton’s sonnet cycle, Idea, was included in the 1619, 1620, 1630, and 1637 editions of his collected poems. A number of individual Drayton sonnets appear in seventeenth-century manuscript collections. 5 For statistics about the Elizabethan and post-Elizabethan publication and republication of sonnets and other poetry books, see Lukas Erne and Tamsin Badcoe, “Shakespeare and the Popularity of Poetry Books in Print, 1583–1622,” RES n.s. 65, no. 268 (2013): 33–57. 6 The first four and the sixth are numbered; the fifth and six are noted as “incomplete.” Robert Kreuger (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 442, claims that the contents of this manuscript were transcribed in 1595 and between 1608 and 1609, still within the period of the fashion for sonnet collections. 7 This form has interlocked quatrains: ababbcbccdcdee. Spenser did not invent this form, which was used by Scottish poets—for example, by King James in his own early verse. 8 See “Mel and Sal: Some Problems in Sonnet-Theory,” in Shakespeare’s Living Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 68–134. 9 In Steven W. May and William A. Ringler, Jr., Elizabethan Poetry: A Bibliography and First-line Index of English Verse, 1559–1603, vol. 3 (London and New York: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004), this rhyme scheme does not appear. 10 Other poems with unusual rhyme schemes are: “Love with the Tresses of thy Chesnut hayre” (abbaacccddeffe—not in May and Ringler) (in Bod MS Eng. poet. c.50, f. 84, BL MS Harley 6918, f. 23v, Harv. MS Eng. 626, f. 23v); “As

366

11 12 13

14

15

16

17

18 19

20 21

22

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript

men in Debt, to shunne Melancholie” (abbbaaccaaddaaa—not in May and Ringler) (BL MS Add. 10309, f. 100) and “Princes which by the right of true Succession” (abbbaaccadefdef—not in May and Ringler) (in BL MS Harley 6918, f. 22v and Harv. MS Eng. 626, f. 22v). This poem is also found in Ros. MS 243/4, p. 35 and BL MS Harley 6918, f. 23. Colie, 79. William Drummond reports: “He cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets, which he said were like that tyrant’s bed, where some who were too short were racked, others too long cut short” (“Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden,” in Ben Jonson: The Complete Poems, ed. George Parfitt [1975; rpt. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982], 462). Guillaume Coatalen, “Unpublished Elizabethan Sonnets in a Legal Manuscript from the Cambridge University Library,” RES n.s. 54, no. 217 (November 2003): 564, points out that this is the rhyme scheme of one of the sonnets he transcribes. He also cites L. Weeks, “The Order of Rhymes of the English Sonnet,” MLN 25 (1910): 179, who notes that this rhyme scheme is found in only twenty-four of the 6283 sonnets he has examined. James Riddell, “Cunning Pieces Wrought: Ben Jonson’s Sonnets,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 87.2 (April 1988): 194, identifies these as Uncollected Poems 2 (“In authorem,” a commendatory poem for Nicholas Breton’s Melancholic Humours [1601]), Uncollected Poetry 7 (“To the Author,” for Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Minde in General, 2nd edn., 1604), Epigrammes LVI (“On Poet-Ape”), Prologue to the Court to The Staple of Newes, Under-wood XXVIII (“A Sonnet, To the Noble Lady, The Lady Mary Wroth,” and Under-wood LXVIII (“An Epigram, To the House-hold”). Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 310, n. 66. Riddell, 195n.13. points out that Anne Ferry, All in War with Time: Love Poetry of Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Marvell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 138, calls the poem “one of Jonson’s rare sonnets.” In Herrick’s Hesperides, see, for example, poems # 1, 38, 74, 86, 204, 355, 459, 612, 723, 804, 947, 956, 966, 1017, and 1186 (in The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, vol. 1, ed. Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2013]). See also Ros MS 1083/16, p. 4. See, for example, two poems that follow this one: North’s eighteen-line “To make an Inventory of thy parts” (f. 57v) and the twenty-six line “Since Cupid to loves Seas my bark hath prest” (f. 58). Forest also has Shakespearean sonnets on pp. 26, 74–75, and 196. He matriculated at Wadham College in 1629, received his B.A. in 1632 and M.A. in 1635. See Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses … 1500–1714, vol. 1 (Oxford: Parker and Co., 1891), 40. This piece also appears in BL MSS Add. 25303, ff. 109v-10, Lansdowne 238, f. 160v, Harley 3910, f. 53 and Harley 4955, f. 70v. See the discussion of Austin in Chapter 7, p. 221. Plans to repair and restore St. Paul’s were made in the early 1630s, but the project was interrupted by the English Civil Wars. See https://www.stpauls.co.uk/history-collections/history/cathedral-historytimeline (accessed 7 July 2020). Austin died in 1634. Beal believes that this manuscript was compiled while Percival was at Magdalene College, Cambridge https://celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/britishlibrary-additional-45000.html#british-library-additional-45000_id351463 (accessed 20 May 2020).

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 367 23 The Folger Index indicates that this poem survives in two other manuscripts and three print volumes https://firstlines.folger.edu/advancedSearch.php?val1= Pox+take+you+mistress&col1=firstline#results (accessed 20 May 2020). 24 The Folger Index lists two other manuscript and four print copies https:// firstlines.folger.edu/advancedSearch.php?val1=Go+with+thy&col1=firstline# results (accessed 20 May 2020). 25 This poem is also found in BL MS Egerton 2421, f. 28v; Bod. MS Ash. 781, p. 157; and Yale Osb. MS b.197, p. 210. 26 I discuss this in “Shakespeare’s Sonnets and the Manuscript Circulation of Texts in Early Modern England,” in Michael Schoenfeldt (ed.), A Companion to Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 197–98. 27 “Montanus” is the persona Ramsey adopts in several of his poems. On this manuscript, see Edward Doughtie, “John Ramsay’s Manuscript as a Personal and Family Document,” in W. Speed Hill (ed.), New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, Papers of the Renaissance English Text Society, 1985–1991 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies in conjunction with Renaissance English Text Society, 1993), 281–88. 28 In the index of rhyme schemes in May and Ringler, this one does not appear. There is a similar insertion of a couplet before a final cross-rhymed quatrain in a poem found in BL MS Harley 6918, “Love with the Tresses of thy Chesnutt haire” (f. 23v), a poem found also in Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50, f. 84. 29 The OED 3.a defines “crotchet” figuratively as “A symbol for a note of half the value of a minim, made in the form of a stem with a round (formerly lozenge-shaped) black head; a note of this value.” 30 This manuscript contains (after their publication) eighteen poems by Donne. See CELM https://celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/british-library-egerton.html (accessed 19 June 2020). 31 The Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences: Studies in Conventional Conceits (1938; New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), 95–98. 32 “Survival and change: the sonnet from Milton to the Romantics,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Sonnet, ed. A. D. Cousins and Peter Howarth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 167–84, at 166. 33 Cf. Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50, ff. 80v-81; Harv. MS Eng. 626, f. 17v; and Folger MS V.a.96, f. 22. This poem is reproduced and collated in Linda Marilyn Jones, “A Critical Edition of a seventeenth-Century Poetical Manuscript Miscellany (HM 172)” (PhD Diss, University of Calgary, 1980), 91. 34 This poem is also found in Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50, f. 83; Harv. MS Eng 626, f. 22; and Ros. MS 243/4, p. 110. 35 This poem also appears in three manuscripts related to Harley 6018: Ros. MS 239/23, p. 46; Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50, f. 83; and Harv. MS Eng. 626, f. 22. 36 This poem is also in Add. 62135, f. 342 with substantive variants:1 injuries] malice; werte] had’st been3 might] durst5 bee it that] whither; thy] thy rare7 the more] with griefe10 converts] convert13 thy] thine 37 Jerome de Groot, “Coteries, complications and the question of female agency,” in Ian Atherton and Julie Sanders (eds.), The 1630s: Interdisciplinary essays on culture and politics in the Caroline era (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2006), 196. De Groot, 196, describes this collection as both local and national in scope: Ranging from probably the late 1620s to the late 1650s, featuring familial poetry and more widely circulated material, the manuscript is a collection in several hands of poems, epitaphs, lists, occasional verse, translations,

368

Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript and, notably for a collection of poems like this, answer poetry … Cholmley’s commonplace book reflects a standard educated-class determination to anthologise (including standard poems by Carew, Waller, Herrick and Jonson, the most anthologised poets of the period). It is consciously local in scale, too, incorporating poems by Sir Albertus Morton … “by sr Warham St. Leger of Outcome als Oucome in Kent” … and a reply “To the Author his brother” by Anthony St Leger … “An Epitaph made vpon ye death of ye Lady Hayes first wife to ye now Earle of Carlisle, and daughter to ye Lord Deny made by I.A. by my best Cosen Laurence Ashbournham,” … “by my brother Sr Hugh Cholmley …, Sir Nicholas Selwin … ‘hary Wiat’ … and Sir Edmund Scory …”

An online facsimile of this manuscript is available from the Harvard Library at https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:14003562$1i (accessed 20 June 2020). 38 This anonymous poem is also found repeated in BL MS Egerton 2230, f. 13v and f. 22v. 39 Krueger (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies, 435. 40 See BL MS Add. 22601, ff. 72-88v, 95–106. 41 This poem appears in four different manuscripts: Bod MS Eng. Poet. c.50, f. 116; BL MS Egerton 2725, f. 62v; Folger MS V.a.96, f. 49v; and Harv. MS Eng. 626, f. 76. The text is found in John Carey, “The Poems of Nicholas Hare,” RES n.s. 11, no. 44 (1960): 365–83, at 375. See also Jones, 183–85. 42 Among the other love poems Skipwith composed is another in the sonnet form, “What meanes my Muse, or is the Musor made” (f. 179). 43 This also appears in BL MSS Add. 10309, f. 59 and Harley 791, f. 55v; and Bod. MS Eng. Poet. c.50, p. 216. 44 Fowler, 84. One could consider Sir John Davies’s “Gulling Sonnets” as poems of this sort. See Krueger (ed.), The Poems of Sir John Davies, 163–67.2 45 This phrase echoes the Prologue to Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. I am grateful to Steven May for pointing this out. 46 This is a smaller sheet tipped into the main manuscript. 47 Jane Carey (c. 1594–1633) was the sister of Henry Cary, 1st Viscount Falkland. See ODNB https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4837 (accessed 20 June 2020). 48 There is a legend, going back to ancient times, that salamanders could live in fire. 49 This poem is found in Peter Davidson (ed.), The Poems and Translations of Sir Richard Fanshawe, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 43. Davison, 1.xxiv–xxxv has a description of the manuscript. Fanshawe’s poems can be found in Hunt. MS HM 116 and Bod. MS Firth c.1 as well as in his printed translation of Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido (1648). A textually variant version of this poem is found in Hunt. MS HM 904, ff. 105v-6—see Deborah AldrichWatson (ed.), The Verse Miscellany of Constance Aston Fowler: A Diplomatic Edition (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Renaissance English Text Society, 2000), 141. 50 If “heat” were pronounced the same as “hate,” this is a pun. 51 There is another copy of this poem in BL MS Harley 6038, f. 29v. 52 These two (unique) poems begin “Delia wee wounder and tis strange that you” (p. 138 [#182]) and “Thy worth (Deare frind) revives the long hidd flame” (p. 138 [#184]. A modern index to Bod. MS Ash. 38 lists the following numbered poems as written by Butterix (or “Butteris”): #151, 152,

Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Collections 369

53 54 55

56 57

58 59 60 61 62

63

64 65

159, 160, 182, 184. I discuss one of these, his rewriting of Donne’s “A Valediction: forbidding mourning,” in Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric, 152–54. I have not been able to identify this woman, who does not appear in the ODNB. This poem is found also in Bod. MS Rawl. D. 317, f. 76. William Alabaster’s religious sonnets were, with one exception not published in the early modern period, but can be found in Bod. MSS Eng. Poet. e.57 and Tanner 465 and 466; Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS 309; St. John’s College, Cam. MS T.9.30; Oscott College MS shelf RZZ3, case B.11; and Nat’l Libr. of South Africa, Cape Town MS Grey 7 1 29. See Beal: http://www.celmms.org.uk/authors/alabasterwilliam.html (accessed 31 January 2019). Anthony Petti, “Unknown Sonnets by Sir Toby Matthew,” Recusant History 9.3 (October 1967): 123–58. Aldrich-Watson, 146. See also Brian W. Connolly, “The Marian Sonnets of ‘J.B.,’” in Dorothy L. Latz (ed.), Neglected English Literature: Recusant Writings of the 16th–17thCenturies, Salzburg Studies in English Literature: Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies, ed. James Hogg, 92:24 (Salzburg, Austria: Institut fűr Anglistik und Amerikanstik, Universität Salzburg, 1997), 99–106. Marian sonnets were published by someone with the initials “J. B.” in Virginalia, Or Spirituall Sonnets in prayse of the Most Glorious Virgin Marie (1632). Guillaume Coatalen, “An English Translation of Desportes’ Christian Sonnets Presented to John Scudamour by Edward Ski[…],” RES n.s. 65, no. 271 (2013): 619–46. See “To E. of D. with six holy Sonnets,” in John Donne, The Divine Poems, 2nd edn., ed. Helen Gardner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 5–6. This poem also appears in BL MS Add. 58215, f. 75. On this topic, see Lowell Gallagher, Sodomscapes: Hospitality in the Flesh (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017). See “The Sinner,” “Redemption,” “H. Baptisme (1),” “Sinne (1),” “Prayer (1),” “Love I and II,” “The H. Scriptures I and II,” “Avarice,” “Christmas” (first part), “The Holdfast,” “Josephs Coat,” “The Sonne,” and “The Answer” (from The Temple). See also the two English sonnets he wrote as a young man that were printed in Isaac Walton’s Lives, “My God, where is that ancient heat towards thee” and “Sure Lord, there is enough in thee to dry” (in Helen Wilcox (ed.), The English Poems of George Herbert [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], 4, 6). In a section of “Songs and Sonnets,” most of the “sonnets” are not quatorzains, but, in the looser seventeenth-century use of the term, songs. There are, however, several true (and apparently unique copies of) sonnets: “Cupid was angry with my merry face” (99–100), “They say love sware, he never would be friend” (100–1), and “As many stars as heav’n containeth, strive” (102–3). Though there are cross-rhymed quatrains in the first of these, the poem is printed in two seven-line stanzas. This book has two adjacent sonnets in Shakespearean form, “Against Marriage” (“There never lived that married woman yet”) and “Against Melancholy” (“Go damned Melancholy, get thee hence”) (100–1). This collection includes a sonnet that first appeared in print in The Phoenix Nest (1593), “In praise of his Mistress” (“Those Eyes which sets my fancies on a fire”) and another, apparently unique, poem, “A Lovers Complaint” (“My joyes are dark, but cleare are seen my woes”) (98–99).

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Rare or Unique Poems in Manuscript

66 See “P. A Sonnet” (“So glides a long the wanton Brook” [75]. This is also found in BL MSS Add. 25707, f. 81v and 47111, f. 21; Bod. MS Mus. b.1, f. 54v; Folger MS V.b.43, f. 28v; and St. John’s Col. Camb. MS S.32, f. 16v) and “Opportunity neglected” (“Yet was her Beauty as the blushing Rose” [84]; also in Ros. MS 1083/17, f. 94b and St. John’s Col. Camb. MS S.32, f. 33).

Conclusion

Despite the mass of manuscript documents preserving English poetry written and disseminated in the early modern period, we actually have relatively little detailed knowledge about the actual ways in which most poems and groups of poems circulated. We can discern some distinctive environments in which poems were written and transmitted—such as the university, the court, the Inns of Court, and particular country houses. We can also detect personal relationships behind particular poetic collaborations and exchanges, such as those between Sir Philip Sidney and Fulke Greville, John Donne and Sir Edward Herbert of Cherbury, and Benjamin Rudyerd and the Earl of Pembroke. But people and texts ranged far and wide so much that we cannot be sure about their actual “bibliogeographical” locations at the time they were transcribed in a particular collection. Many individual texts, small gatherings of verse, and larger collections survived only by accident, usually through their material preservation in government or religious archives or the large houses of the upper-class families. Furthermore, what has come down to us is only a portion of the original documentary evidence, perhaps only a very small portion. This situation challenges textual scholars to trace lines of descent and the changes that were the product of transmission error and/or deliberate alterations of texts. We are constantly reminded that, as widespread as the system of manuscript literary transmission was, it lacked the kind of preservation power of print culture, most of whose products have survived. We have only to recall that, without the print record, many of the poems, plays, and fictions of the early modern period would have been lost, including many of Shakespeare’s plays. Much has been omitted in this book’s examination of the system of manuscript transmission of poetry in early modern England—for example, the single sheets or bifolia that survive as loose manuscript documents containing circulating verse. I allude to some that have been incorporated in composite manuscripts bound in their own time or later, but there are other surviving separates and booklets that are not part of larger collections. Although some of the compilations I examine have prose, they are, for the most part, poetical anthologies rather than true

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Conclusion

“miscellanies,” that is documents containing a large amount of nonliterary or non-poetic material. Some of these miscellanies contain interesting poetic items, but, in selecting particular manuscripts for discussion, I have generally chosen not to focus on those assemblages. Except in one case, this study has also not considered the separate entry of poetic items into printed books, a quite common practice in a period in which readers were encouraged to annotate printed volumes and to enter short poetic excerpts or full poems into volumes they owned—a continuation of a medieval habit. Finally, also excluded from this study are collections of texts from lower strata of society, very few of which survive: collections such as John Hanson’s household book, which Steven W. May and I have edited and discussed in Ink, Stink Bait, Revenge, and Queen Elizabeth: A Yorkshire Yeoman’s Household Book.1 Though I was interested in choosing collections to include those that clearly manifest their connections to the environments in which they were assembled, the selection of Folger MS V.a.89 and V.a.345, BL MSS Add. 25707 and 33998, and Sloane 1446 was somewhat arbitrary. I avoided examining other manuscripts that would also have served my purposes, some because they were edited and/or closely studied by others: Bod. MSS Rawl. Poet. 85 and 148; BL MS Harley 7392; Cam. MS Dd.5.75; Ros. MSS 1083/15; Hunt. MSS HM 172 and HM 904; National Art Library MS Dyce 44; and the Leicestershire Record Office’s “Burley Manuscript.” Other manuscripts, to which I refer in the course of this book, might have served as the focus of particular chapters: BL MSS Add. 10309 and 30982, Harley 3910 and 6917-18 and Sloane 1792; Bod. MSS Ash. 38, Don. d.58, Eng. Poet. e.14 and e.97; and Hunt. MS HM 198.2. To take one of these as an example, Bod. MS Ash. 38 is a very large anthology of poems assembled by a Royalist, Sir Nicholas Burghe, approximately one-quarter of whose 400+ poems are apparently unique copies, some written by the compiler himself. In the sheer number and variety of its verse, it rivals any printed miscellany from the Tudor and Stuart periods. Without the collecting efforts of compilers such as Burghe, the mid-seventeenth-century printed poetical anthologies certainly would have had fewer resources to mine. When I first examined the field of early modern English manuscript verse for my earlier study, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric, I was overwhelmed by the documentary evidence, which, at the time was available on site in particular archives such as the British Library, the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the Folger Shakespeare Library or on microfilms available from those and other archives in the large project undertaken by Harvester Publishing in the late 1980s (now digitally available). Peter Beal’s original Index of English Literary Manuscripts had not yet been expanded and made accessible online in digital form as CELM, the remarkable and valuable indexing work of Carolyn Nelson later incorporated in the Folger Index

Conclusion 373 had not yet become available, various libraries’ digitizing projects had not yet put online many images of manuscript pages or whole manuscripts. Although a number of individual manuscripts had been edited as dissertations and some of these editions later published in print, the editing of poetical collections had not yet achieved the scholarly prestige it has since attained. Now, through internet technology, it is easier for scholars to get access to valuable archival material for either editing purposes or for use in their literary and historical scholarship. The search for copies of poetic texts has broadened to other archives and new discoveries are continually being made. The whole enterprise of studying and/or editing manuscript poetry is paradoxically both a longstanding one and an exciting new enterprise. Much more needs to be done to understand the whole system of manuscript-circulated verse, but, in terms of available resources, there has never been a better time for scholars to conduct this research.

Note 1 Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2014. See also Steven W. May, “Henry Gurney, a Norfolk Farmer, Reads Spenser and Others,” Spenser Studies 20 (2005): 183–223.

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Index

The Academy of Complements 329 acrostic poems 269–271 Alabaster, William 293 anagram poems 267, 268–269 Andrewes, Lancelot 228 Anne (queen) 8 answer-poems 20–21, 39, 279–282, 309, 320–322 anti-Catholicism 78, 79, 81, 82, 124–125, 362 anti-Puritan poetry 182, 183, 185–186 anti-Scots poetry 165 aphorisms 282–283 Aretino, Pietro 11; Sonetti Lussoriosi 11 Aston, Sir Walter 363 Aston-Fowler, Constance 363 Atkins, Francis 68, 339, 340 Aubrey, John 64, 185, 186, 189, 193, 194, 199, 233 Ausonius 293, 295 Austin, William 228 Ayton, Sir Robert 70, 110, 114, 136, 156, 230 Bacon, Sir Francis 12, 60, 151, 156, 222, 228, 231, 237, 238 Baker, Sir Richard 236 Bannister, Edward 22 Bashe, William 11; “The French Primero” 11 Basse, William 230 Bastard, Thomas 143 bawdy poetry 77–78, 151–155, 257–259, 295, 325–329 Beal, Peter 4, 5, 60, 65, 69, 184, 224, 227, 229, 232, 297, 372 Beaumont, Francis 4, 7, 60, 77, 114,

118, 120, 123, 136, 156, 194, 225, 227, 230, 232, 233 Beaumont, Sir John 110, 112, 113, 118, 119, 124, 136 Beaumont, Sir Thomas 121 Bellany, Alastair 11 Bellasis, Margaret 14, 254, 257, 263, 281, 340, 345 Belvedere: or the Garden of the Muses 19 Benson, John 19, 343 Best, Charles 228 bifolia 224, 371 Bland, Mark 230, 231 Blount, Charles 8, 64, 136, 225, 229, 301, 308 Blount, Henry 112, 224, 229, 232 Bond, Garth 225 Bond, John 222 Bond, William 37, 41 Breton, Nicholas 3 Brockman, Henry 227 Brooke, Christopher 222, 229, 231, 347 Browne, William (of Tavistock) 5, 24, 112, 143, 194, 224, 228, 229, 232, 298, 308, 335, 347; Britannia’s Pastorals 143, 198, 347 Burghe, Sir Nicholas 5, 7, 22, 255, 287, 292, 295, 301, 357, 360, 372 Burke, Victoria 14 Butterix, Simon 17, 360 Byrd, William 112; Songs of Sundrie Natures 112 Caesar, Julius 3 Calfe, Peter 5, 196, 281, 288, 301, 348, 349, 355, 362 Calvinist anxiety 262

392

Index

Camden, William 23; Remaines 23 canonical poets 24–25, 66, 156–157 Carew, Thomas 10, 21, 23, 66, 70, 110, 114, 136, 194, 196, 197, 200, 229, 230, 232, 308; “A Rapture” 10 Caroline period 121–122, 185, 197, 330; dueling in 71; late 196 Cartwright, William 194, 196 Cary, Sir Thomas 110 Catullus 293 Cavendish, Sir William. see Newcastle, 1st Earl of (Sir William Cavendish) Cecil, Robert. see Salisbury, Earl of (Robert Cecil) Champernoune, Henry 6 Charles I (king) 122, 228, 257 Charles II (king) 114, 322 Cheke, Lady Mary 20 Chichester, Sir Arthur 79, 80 Cholmley, Hugh 350 Christ Church, Oxford literary environment 70, 122, 142, 194–195, 224; dissemination of popular poetry at 24; manuscript poetry in collections 6; poems from spreading to London 195–198, 224; poetry from 61, 62; poetry in early 17th century in 181–195; poets from 10, 12, 21; political and religious interests of writers from 182–183; rare/unique poems from 308–331; sociocultural and political connections to London 198–200; as source of poetry 148–150 Chute, Chaloner 7, 10, 60, 63, 65, 71, 77, 84, 232, 233, 239, 279 Clarendon, Earl of (Edward Hyde) 229 Clarke, Elizabeth 14 Clavell, John 149 Cleveland, John 21, 257 Coatalen, Guillaume 363 Cobbes, James 235 Codrington, Robert 301 Colclough, David 220, 238 Colie, Rosalie 336, 337 Combe, Thomas 143 Commentaries (Caesar) 3 common placing 3–4 “Commons Petition” 12 complementary poems 358–361 Coningsby, Humphrey 22, 38, 253, 255, 261

Constable, Henry 227 continental printed poetry collections 1 Corbett, Richard 8, 12, 21, 78, 114, 122, 136, 148, 149, 181, 183, 184, 185, 194, 195, 196, 199, 200, 227, 230, 232, 234, 308, 320, 322, 329; “Iter Boreale” 12, 308; Poetica Stromata 184; “To the ladies of the new dress” 21; “Upon Fairford Widows” 185–186 Cornwallis, Anne 14, 20, 37, 38–39 Coryat’s Crudites 222 Cotton, Sir Robert 222 Cotton, Sir Rowland 145; The Nipping or Snipping of Abuses 145 Cranfield, Sir Lionel 237 Crashaw, Richard 14, 196; Steps to the Temple 196 Creswell, Robert 265 Cromwell, Oliver 290 Crosse, Thomas 45 Crum, Margaret 195 Cummings, Laurence 2, 38, 310 Cust, Richard 106 Daniel, Samuel 335 Davenant, William 114, 229 Davies, Sir John 143, 199, 222, 226, 230, 239, 309 Davison, Francis 225 Day, Matthew 285 Deane, John 148 defamation 11 de Groot, Jerome 350 Denny, Edward. see Norwich, Earl of (Edward Denny) Desportes, Philippe 363; Sonnets spirutuels 363 Devereux, Penelope 8 Dickinson, Emily 1 didactic poetry 362–363 Digby, George 114 Digby, Sir Kenneth 235 Donne, John 2, 4, 5, 6, 10–11, 12, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23, 24, 25, 60, 105, 107, 109, 112, 120, 121, 123, 124, 126, 133, 136, 156–157, 182, 184, 194, 195, 197, 222, 224, 225, 227, 228, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 239, 256, 282, 287, 288, 311, 329, 335, 342, 346, 352, 355, 357, 363, 364, 371; “To his Mistress Going to

Index 393 Bed” 10–11; “Loves Diet” 17; “The Perfume” 18; poems influenced by 312–314; Songs and Sonnets 109; “The Will” 16–17; “A Valediction: forbidding mourning” 17; “A Valediction of my name in the window” 346 Douglas, Mary 7, 14 Drake, Sir Francis 82 Drayton, Michael 335 Drummond, William 156 Dryden, John 271 du Bellay 293 Duncan-Jones, Katherine 41 Duppa, Brian 21, 148, 194, 196, 200, 308 Dyer, Sir Edward 20, 38, 40, 51, 230, 301 Earle, John 162, 194 early Caroline period 112, 237; early Cavalier eroticism in 64 early Jacobean period 123 early Stuart period: Inns of Court as rich literary environment in 60; libels 11–12; poetry during 37–38 early Tudor verse 52 Eckhardt, Joshua 121 Egerton, John 4 elegies 7–9, 254, 274–276, 322–324; about family and/or friends 22; to family members, lovers and friends 259–271 Elizabethan amorousness style 311 Elizabethan period: amorous lyricism in 38, 40; Inns of Court as rich literary environment in 60–62; late 224 Elizabethan sonnet craze 347 Elizabeth I (queen) 12, 15, 20, 38, 40, 143, 168, 257, 301 Ellice, Robert 112, 224, 225, 229, 308 England’s Parnassus 19 English Civil Wars 12, 123, 196, 257, 289, 292 epigrammatic poetry 13–14, 143–149, 165–166, 226–227, 254, 296; satiric 254–256 epistolary verse exchange 21–22 epitaphs 7–9, 254, 323; about family and/or friends 22; Latin 296–298; misogynistic 254–255; satirical 254–256, 273–274; sonnets as 347, 361–362

Ezell, Margaret 14 Fairfax, Thomas 6 family coterie compilation 350 Fanshawe, Richard 359, 363 Felltham, Owen 110, 197, 230, 320 Felton, John 232 Fenton, Nicholas 228 Fielding, Henry 64 Finet, John 2, 7, 38 Fitzgeffrey, Henry 143, 146; Satyres: and Satyricall Epigrams 146 Fitzjames, Leweston 226 Fletcher, John 120, 282; The Faithful Shepherdess 120 Forey, Margaret 185 Fowler, Alistair 337, 356 Fowler, Constance Aston 14 Freeman, Thomas 143, 147; Rubbe, and a Great Cast: Epigrams 147 Frowyk, Sir Thomas 6 fugitive poems 335 Gamage, William 143 Garrard, George 222 Gascoigne, George 45, 51; The Adventures of Master F.J. 45 Gell, John 293 Gesta Grayorum 225 Gill, Alexander 359 Glover, Richard 6, 352 gnomic pieces 283–284 Gomersall, Robert 322 Goodyer, Sir Henry 2, 105, 121, 123, 136, 222, 225 Gorge, Sir Arthur 5 Gottschalk, Katherine 23 Grange, John 21, 224, 232, 234, 301, 308 The Greek Anthology 337 Greville, Fulke 335, 371 Grymstone, Elizabeth 226; Miscellanea 226 Gunter, Eleanor 14 Gurney, Henry 231 Habington, William 23 Haigh, Christopher 120 Hakewill, William 222 Halliwell-Phillips, James 41 Hanson, John 4, 6, 372 Hare, Nicholas 123, 225, 230, 354 Harington, Henry 112

394

Index

Harington, Sir John (of Exton) 5 Harington, Sir John (of Stepney) 2, 4, 5, 18, 20, 24, 25, 124, 113, 143, 148, 154, 231, 233, 309, 337; Epigrams 124; “Of a certain man” 20, 154 The Harmony of the Muses 9, 24, 130 Heath, John 143, 145 Helgerson, Richard 221 Heneage, Sir Thomas 20 Herbert, George 5, 21, 23, 230, 235, 335, 363, 364; The Temple 364 Herbert, Sir Edward 371 Herbert, William. see Pembroke, Earl of (William Herbert) Herrick, Robert 66, 68, 110, 194, 197, 200, 230, 301, 308, 337; Hesperides 308 Heylyn, Peter 70, 148, 149 Highmore, Nathaniel 6 Hobbes, Thomas 235 Hobbs, Mary 112, 122, 182, 185, 195, 224, 225, 227, 228, 229, 232, 238, 308 Holland, Hugh 222, 225, 228, 232 Holles, Henrietta 14, 15 Hopkins, John 267 Hopkinson, John 6 Horace 293, 295 Hoskins, John 12, 18, 222, 224, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 239, 308; “The Parliament Fart” 12, 18, 182, 237 household books 4 Howard, Francis 123 Howard, Henry. see Surrey, Earl of (Henry Howard) Howard, Thomas 14 Hutton, Henry 143; Follie’s Anatomie: or Satyres and Satyricall Epigrams 143 Hyde, Edward. see Clarendon, Earl of (Edward Hyde) Hyde, Sir Nicholas 65, 237 Index of English Literary Manuscripts (Beal) 372 Inns of Court 112, 136, 195; cultural milieu of 236–237; as intellectuallycharged milieux 60; John Donne and environment of 222–223; kinds of poems from 253; late Elizabethan compared to mid Jacobean periods 224; list of poets whose work survives

in manuscript collections 221–222; manuscript collections associated with 223–233; as place for poetry circulation 2, 6; poetical collections kept by men at 8, 14; poetic compilations with roots in social world of 231–232; poetic manuscripts circulated at 223–233; poets and parliamentarians in 222; poets from 233–236; politics and 237–238; as rich socioliterary environments in 17th century 220–221; site-specific poems at 271–279; social networks among literate individuals at 221; urban social groups and 220 Interregnum period 123, 196 Jacobean period 112, 237, 330; dueling in 71; Inns of Court in 220–221; support for European Protestantism 79 Jacobean period (late) 121–122; conflict between royal prerogative and parliamentary power 80; early Cavalier eroticism in 64; Spanish Match political crisis in 80–84, 182, 199, 232, 237, 238 Jaggard, William 193, 298; The Passionate Pilgrim 41, 193, 194, 298 James 1 (king) 7, 8, 18, 71, 80, 81, 83, 114, 119, 149, 182, 199 John, Lisle Cecil 347 Johnson, Dr. Samuel 150 Jones, Inigo 222 Jones, Robert 143; Ultimum Vale 143 Jonson, Ben 4, 6, 19, 20, 22, 24, 60, 62, 77, 112, 114, 156, 182, 194, 197, 220, 222, 225, 228, 230, 231, 232, 235, 236, 281, 308, 311, 315–320, 329, 337, 364; “Charis” 19–20; Epicoene 19, 281; The New Inn 320; Venetia Digby poems 315–320 Jonsonian style of Cavalier verse 197 Juvenal 293 Juxon, William 8, 148 King, Dorothy 136 King, Henry 7, 21, 110, 122, 136, 148, 182, 184, 194, 195, 196, 230, 232, 238, 308, 320, 322, 362 King, Philip 112, 114

Index 395 Knowles, James 106, 115, 118 Knowles, Thomas 274 Krueger, Robert 226, 353 Lake, Peter 81 Lamb, Mary Ellen 225, 234 Lanyer, Emilia 14 Lapworth, Edward 148, 149, 150 Lapworth, Robert 301 Lawes, Henry 112; Ayres and Dialogues 112 Leare, Daniel 6, 185, 189, 193, 238, 301 Leicestershire 105, 121, 122, 123, 136; impact of on manuscripts 114–122; politics of 106; religious dynamics in 124 Leishman, J. B. 3 Le Neve, Oliver 6 Le Neve, Peter 6 Lenthall, Thomas 286 Lewis, William 148, 232 libel laws 10, 199; political 11–12 Lilliat, John 22 literary supplements 17–18 Love, Harold 2, 181, 195, 220, 233 love poetry 253, 255, 261, 325–329; sonnet form of 348–352 Lucan 293 Lyttleton, Elizabeth 14 Manley, Lawrence 239 Manne, Thomas 13–14, 196, 362 Marlowe, Christopher 20, 22, 77; Hero and Leander 77; “Passionate Shepherd” (20–21 Marlowe, Thomas 8 The Marrow of the Complements 45 Marston, John 60 Martial 293, 294 Martin, L. C. 196 Martin, Richard 222 Mason, H. A. 52 Massinger, Philip 237; A New Way to Pay Old Debts 237 Matthew, Sir Toby 230, 363 May, Stephen W. 372 Mayne, Jasper 194, 322 McCrae, Andrew 11 McCullough, Peter 230 metapoetic poems 299–301 Middleton, Thomas 71 mid-Jacobean period 151, 224

Milton, John 308, 335, 364 misogynistic epigrams 10–11, 154–155 misogynistic epitaphs 254–255 Mompesson, Sir Giles 151, 237 moral and didactic verse 282–285 moral versifying 283–285 More, Sir Thomas 293, 297 Morley, George 6, 8, 148, 182, 183, 184, 194, 196, 199, 200, 232, 266, 267, 308 Moseley, Humphrey 45, 47 Mott, Thomas 279 Murray, Thomas 228 Museus 293 Nelson, Carolyn 372 Neoplatonic amorousness of Caroline court 320 The New Academy of Complements 188 Newcastle, 1st Earl of (Sir William Cavendish) 4 North, Dudley 5, 110, 339; The Forest of Varieties 230, 339 Norwich, Earl of (Edward Denny) 4 O’Callaghan, Michelle 123, 220, 229, 231, 233 Oldisworth, Nicholas 70 oral recitation (or performance) 3 Overbury, Sir Thomas 23, 343; “The Wife” 23, 343 Ovid 8, 293; Amores 8 Owen, John 143, 293, 296 palinodes (anti-love poems) 356–358 The Paradise of Dainty Devices 51, 330 paraphrases 293–298 Parnassus Biceps 24 parodies 279–282 Parrot, Henry 23, 143, 146, 231 Pembroke, Earl of (William Herbert) 228, 232, 234, 308, 371 Perceval, Sir John 18, 21, 22, 264, 336, 341 Perdita project 14 Perrière, Guillaume de la 143 Pestell, Thomas 120, 121, 123, 136 Petrarch 1, 287, 293, 336, 347 Petti, Anthony 363 Philips, Katherine 14

396

Index

Phillips, Francis 114 poetical quires (or booklets) 224 A Poetical Rhapsody 6, 20, 225 poetic bricolage 298 poetic excerpts 18–19 poetic imitation 18–20, 309 poetry writing, purposes of 253–254 polemical poetry 257–259, 362–363 political ballads 289–291 political verse 79–83, 257–259, 330–331 Poole, Walton 24, 70, 230 pornography 11 Porter, Walter 112; Madrigals and Ayres 112 Powle, Stephen 2 pre-Gutenberg era 2 Price, Daniel 21, 148, 182 Prideaux, Anne 24 Prince, F. T. 41 Pulter, Hester 5 Puttenham, George 19; Arte of English Poesy 19 Radcliff, Edward 148 Radney, Sir George 320 Raimondi, Marcantonio 11 Rainolds, Henry 230 Ralegh, Sir Walter 2, 6, 11, 12, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 38, 40, 60, 112, 114, 156, 197, 230, 231, 232, 281, 301, 309, 330, 331; “The Lie” 21; “A Pen put into my Lady Laitons Pocket by Sir W. Rawleigh” 2 Ramsay, John 232, 233, 345 Ramsey, John 3, 19, 301, 345 Randolph, Thomas 21, 66, 194, 197, 200, 322 rare/unique poems (in early modern manuscripts) 45–52, 67–73, 125–131, 157–168, 195, 226, 237, 253–302; from Christ Church, Oxford literary environment 308–331; by compilers 15–17, 130–131 Rawden, Marmaduke 6, 23, 286 religiopolitical conflict 124–125 religious verse 78–79, 257–259, 282–287; sonnets 363–364 Restoration period 168 Reynolds, Henry 21, 110, 136; “A Blackmore Maid wooing a fair boy” 21 Roberts, Richard 6, 233, 238

Roe, Sir John 222, 224, 230 Roe, Sir Thomas 232, 32 Ronsard 1 Rowlands, Samuel 143, 148; The Knave of Harts 148 Royalist drinking songs 290–293 Rudick, Michael 25, 331 Rudyerd, Sir Benjamin 4, 224, 225, 226, 228, 230, 231, 232, 234, 308, 371 Sackville, Richard 364 Salisbury, Earl of (Robert Cecil) 8, 11, 151, 156, 221 Salusbury, Sir Thomas 235, 236 Sanderson, James 226 satirical verse 255–256 Saunders, J. W. 1 Scattergood, Anthony 6 Scott, Thomas 12, 81, 232, 257 scribes and compilers 15–23 Segar, Sir William 143; The Blazon of Papists 143 Selden, John 235 Seneca 293, 294 Senhouse, Richard 230 separate sheets 2, 181, 195, 220, 264, 371 Shakespeare, William 18, 23, 51, 52, 71, 76, 77, 154, 194, 236, 261, 298, 357, 371; poem ascribed to 41–45, 52; Hamlet 71; The Merchant of Venice 18; Sonnets 18, 23, 335, 336–337, 339, 353–354, 360–361; The Tempest 18; Twelfth Night 236; Venus and Adonis 51, 77, 154 Shanne, Richard 293 Shirley, Dorothy 15, 301 Shirley, James 64, 197, 200, 232; The Triumph of Peace 232 Shirley, John 82, 83; The Life of the Valiant & Learned Sir Walter Raleigh, Knight. With his Trial at Winchester 82–83 Sidney, Sir Philip 3, 23, 38, 39, 40, 262, 263, 287, 329, 336, 347, 354, 358, 371; Arcadia 3, 23, 262–263; Astrophil and Stella 287, 336, 358 Sidney, Sir Robert 5, 225 site-specific poems 271–279 Skipwith, Henry 6, 22, 105, 114, 129, 130, 135, 301 Skipwith, William 6, 22, 105, 113,

Index 397 114, 115, 119, 120, 121, 124, 130, 132, 133, 134, 135, 225, 301, 338 Smith, James 200, 308 social functions of mid-Elizabethan verse 52–53 social networking 136, 253; at Inns of Court 221; instability of 224–225 songs 227, 287–293; connected to London musical circles 71–75; drinking 325; love 125; lyrics and 70–71, 112, 157–160; from printed books 24 sonnets 309–311; defining form of 335–340; English form 335; funerary 361–362; Italian form 335, 349; love 338, 348–352; as palinodes (anti-love poems) 356–358; polemical and didactic 362–363; religious 363–364; Shakespearean form 335, 336–337, 340–347, 349; social usefulness of 335; uses of 347–356; as verse epistles 358–361 Southwell, Anne 14 Southwell, Robert 156, 363 Spenser, Edmund 19, 23, 24, 232, 309, 310, 345; Amoretti 309, 345; Amoretti IV 23; Amoretti LXIV 19; The Tears of the Muses 24; Mother Hubberd’s Tale 23, 24; The Ruins of Time 23; The Visions of Petrarch 24 Sportive Wit 9, 24 Stanford, Henry 5, 22 Stanley, Thomas 14; Poems 14 “stigma of print” (Saunders) 1 St. John, Anthony 15 Stone, Ben 148, 230, 232 Stone, Benjamin 182, 227 Strode, William 5, 18, 21, 24, 62, 70, 78, 112, 122, 136, 148, 182, 184, 185, 186, 194, 195, 196, 200, 227, 230, 232, 279, 280, 308, 320, 322, 329 suicide note 261–262 Surrey, Earl of (Henry Howard) 1 Swann, Joel 231 Swayne, Elizabeth 136 Sylvester, Joshua 156, 352 Talbot, Robert 297 Tasso 293 Taylor, Gary 41 Taylor, John 143 Terrent, Jeramiel 21, 148, 182, 194, 200, 308, 320, 322

Thirty Years’ War 322 Thyestes (Seneca) 294 Tichborne, Chidiock 156, 230, 309 Tom Jones (Fielding) 64 Tottel, Richard 1, 25, 51; Miscellany 23, 51; Songs and Sonnettes, Written by the Right Honourable Lorde Henry Howard Late Earle of Surrey, and Other (Tottel) 1 Townley, Zouch 110 Townsend, Aurelian 114, 322 transcription of poems: from memory 3; from written exemplars 2–3 translations 293–298 Tudor period 253; poetry during 37–38 valediction (or propempticon) 313 Vaughan, John 224, 229, 235, 308 verse epistles 266–267; sonnets as 347, 358–361 Villiers, George 12 Virgil 293 Walton, Sir Izaak 21; The Compleat Angler 21 Warmestry, Gervais 194 Warner, William 6 Wastell, Simon 148 Watkins, Richard 277; Newes from the Dead 277 Watson, Thomas 23 Weldon, Anthony 143 Wells, Stanley 41 Wenman, Thomas 301 West, John 230 White, R. S. 347 Whitney, Isabella 14 Winston, Jessica 221, 237 Wisdom, Robert 267 Wits Interpreter 188, 189 Wits Recreations 24, 82, 329 witty verse 254–256 women poets (early modern) 301–302 Wotton, Sir Henry 4, 6, 8, 18, 24, 123, 156, 194, 225, 230, 309 Woudhuysen, Henry R. 2, 38, 40, 41, 229 Wright, Thomas 337; The Passions of the Minde in General 337 Wroth, Lady Mary 5, 14, 335, 337 Wyatt, Sir Thomas 1, 5, 51, 52 Zouch, Richard 143