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Electronic Reserve Text: The Stigma of Print: A Note on the Social Bases of Tudor Poetry Essays in Criticism I (1951) TODAY it is usual to ask of a young author not 'What has he written?' but 'What has he published?'. The achievement of print, with the imprimatur that it implies of a recognized audience of publishers and critics, has become a rough guide to quality and permanence. But the Tudor poet would have been embarrassed, if not insulted, by the question 'What have you published?'. It would have seemed to him to introduce a completely irrelevant emphasis upon an unimportant and indeed somewhat discreditable aspect of authorship. The leading Court poets, those who set the pattern of the times, did not write for print. Men like Wyatt, Surrey, Bryan, John Harington and Vaux in the earlier part of the century, or Sidney, Dyer, Fulke Greville, Raleigh and Oxford in the later part, were not addressing the sort of audience a printed book would normally find. Some of their poems were indeed printed during their lifetime, but without authority -when a manuscript or collection fell into the hands of a printer. And many minor poets followed the examples of their leaders. Southwell, Henry Constable, Cavendish and Udall, for example, never tried to get their poems printed. It is clear that a great deal of Tudor poetry never passed beyond the manuscript stage, and that, even where it did ultimately reach print, the manuscript was generally considered the normal medium of publication. The unimportance of the printed-book audience is proved conclusively by the time-lag between the composition of most Tudor poetry and its appearance in print. The poet was often dead before his work was printed. Wyatt died in 1542, but his Psalms were not printed until 1549, and the bulk of his work remained in manuscript until the publication of Tottel's Miscellany in 1557. Of the other contributors to this miscellany, George Bulleyn had been dead twenty-one years by 1557, Surrey ten, Bryan seven, William Grey six, Vaux one, and Sir [140] John Cheke died in that year. Grimald, John Harington and John Heywood were still alive, but they probably had no idea their poems were being printed, to judge by Grimald's withdrawal of all except his didactic poems from the second edition.(1) To take some examples from different generations and kinds of verse-writers, virtually all Sidney's work remained in manuscript for some fourteen years, Henry Bradshaw's for eight, Bartholomew Young's for sixteen, and Richard Edwards's for more than nine years. John Davies of Hereford must have been writing poetry soon after his establishment in London in the 1580s, but none of it was printed until 1602. It is clear that these poets did not have a printed-book audience of any kind in mind when writing. The earliest publication in print that Fulke Greville seems to have envisaged for his own poetry was a posthumous edition. Even for this his consent was decidedly lukewarm: 'These pamphlets, which having slept out my own time, if they happen to be seene hereafter, shall at their own perill rise upon the stage when I am not.(2) The typical Court poet shunned print. The ready market for his work among the printers meant nothing to him. We have lost much Tudor poetry simply because it was never preserved in print--most of the work, for instance, of Dyer, Raleigh and Oxford. Once poetry had circulated within the manuscript audience, its job was done, and little attempt was made by its writers to preserve it or keep track of it. None of the mass of poems produced for state occasions would have reached print at all but for the enterprise of the Gascoignes and Churchyards, or, for example, the good fortune that enabled the printer of the Bisham masque of 1592 to gather copies in loose papers 'he knew not how imperfect'. Gentlemen, then, shunned print. Consequently, not only was the printer able to take unscrupulous advantage of a Court poet by piracies which could not with dignity be prevented,
(1) H. E. Rollins has shown in the introduction to his edition of the Miscellany (1929) that Grimald's poems were withdrawn, not because he was the editor, or unpopular at the time, or on consideration deemed to be insufficiently courtly, but because he was caught unawares by the publication in the first edition of poems printed from a private collection or commonplace-book. (2) Poems and Dramas of Fulke Greville, ed. G. Bullough, 1939, vol. I, p. 21
but he was also in a strong position with the professional poet who approached him, cap in hand, with a book for publication. The poet who went to market with his wares was a universal butt. 'You have of the Wits,' snorted Sir John Daw, 'that write verses, and yet are no poets: they are Poets that live by it, the poore fellowes that live by it.'(l) By the end of the sixteenth century, the poor fellows that lived by poetry, directly or indirectly, included Spenser, Daniel, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Drayton and Jonson himself. Outside the theatre it was the printers who provided these poets with the best opportunity to capitalize their poetic genius. Though the pecuniary rewards were in themselves meagre and hazardous, and though few writers could expect any regular income from publications, nevertheless the printed page provided ct ready introduction to the fruits of patronage, and thereby, in times which were literally desperate for many authors, a gateway to social advancement and security." So, whereas for the amateur poets of the Court an avoidance of print was socially desirable, for the professional poets outside or only on the edge of Court circles the achievement of print became an economic necessity. The combination produced a climate o[ opinion that was unfavourable to the long poem that is the natural metier of the
1. Epicoene, II, iii. 2. It was Tudor policy to recruit its nobility and gentility from loyal servants of lower- and middle-class origin. The registers of Oxford University reveal that of all those admitted between 1567 and 1622, 6635 or virtually half the total intake were the sons of plebeians. The sons of yeomen, whose golden age was now past, the sons of socially ambitious merchants and tradesmen, together with the younger sons of the country squires, who thanks to the habit of primogeniture could only inherit, like Thomas Wilson the younger, 'that which the catt left on the malt heape', and who like Tusser were 'driven to ronne, And glad to seeke from creeke to creeke, to come by thrift', made up a new middle class of intellectuals who thronged the Universities and Inns of Court, eager for social promotion. This class provided the Wits who made a career in the theatre and the poets who originated a literary profession. Earlier in the century their whole ambition was regular patronage, the key to social position, protection and financial security. This was the motive of the early professional poets of the time of Hawes, and was still paramount with Baldwin, Richard Edwards and Gascoigne. But towards the end of the century patronage declined in volume, reliability and value, under the pressure of economic depression. Lyly, Ocland, Arthur Hay, Richard Robinson, and others have complaints to make against the royal bounty. More emphasis was therefore given to the actual cash rewards obtainable by writers. Gcorge Peele wrote the Honour of the Garter for the Earl of Northumberland, not to win patronage so much as the £3 dedication fee. Fuller tells a story of Spenser's expectation, not only of social promotion, but of a cash reward of £100 as a reward for the Faerie Queene. These first strivings towards an independent literary profession gave a new importance to the achievement of print.
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professional poet. It infects the Faerie Queene itself. (1) But the nature of this infection and the range of its operation have not been generally realized. It is remarkable how widespread the consciousness of the stigma of print was in the sixteenth century and how strict and elaborate a convention was evolved for bypassing it. It will be worth while to recite the facts in some detail before attempting to analyse their critical significance. A few writers boldly dismissed the conventional apologies for printing poetry as so much nonsense. George Pettie, who was on the whole a forthright and sensible man, sailed in with all guns firing: Those which mislike that a Gentleman should publish the fruits of his learning, and some curious Gentlemen, who thinke it most commendable in a Gentleman, to cloake his art and skill in euerie thing, and to seeme to doe all things of his owne mother wit, as it were: not considering how we deserue no praise for that, which God or nature hath bestowed vpon vs, but onelie for that, which we purchase by our owne industrie: and if you shall chance to enter into reasoning with them, they will at the second word make protestation that they are no schollers: wheras not withstanding they haue spent all their time in studies
1. Spenser's ethical ambivalence was partly the product of this contradiction: He tried to have it both ways. As a poet in the epic tradition he addressed a national, and ultimately a universal audience, but as a Tudor poet his audience was necessarily restricted to the Court. The result is at times almost two separate poems. From the point of view of the printed-book audience Sir Artegall and Sir Calidore were primarily the personifications of Justice and Courtesy, whereas for the Court audience they must have been primarily Grey and Essex. 2. A Petite Pallace, ed. I. Gollancz (1908), p. xx. [143] But, for all that, Puttenham himself was so 'dayntie of his doings' that he withheld his name from both the manuscript poem Partheniades and the Arte of English Poesie. Supposing then that a poet, for one reason or another, was obliged to seek print, what sort of rules of decorum would he observe? What sort of precautions would he take to protect his reputation? One way out for the poet was for him to cloak his identity behind anonymity, a pseudonym or initials. Sometimes the necessity for disguise was imposed by political or religious factors, as for instance with Tailboys Dymoke ('T. Cutwode, Esq.'), 'Henry Willobie' (and probably the 'Hadrian Dorrell' and 'Peter Colse' who also figure in the controversy aroused by Willobie his Avisa), 'Lemeke Avale', and Thomas Becon ('Theodore Basil'); or it might be a convenience of business, as with the printer John Awdeley, who is otherwise known as 'John Sampson' or 'Sampson Awdelay'. But many of the pseudonyms were deliberately assumed to protect the author from social condemnation. A familiar instance is Spenser's adoption of the name 'Immerito' as an addition to the tremendous smoke-screen thrown across the Shepheardes Calender by E.K. One I. C., Gent., of Gray's Inn, was so careful about hiding the name of the author whose work he was publishing that to this day the poet has remained unknown except for the pseudonym in the title --A Poore Knight his Pallace of Priuate Pleasures.(1) Some authors, in bashful jocularity, used pseudo-continental names, William Warren becoming 'Guillam de Warrino', and Bartholomew Young 'B. Giouano del M. Temp'. Others, like Roger Bieston, Richard Robinson of Alton, or George Marshall, only disclosed their names through acrostic verses. Francis Davison concealed the identity of the authors of poems in his commonplace-book miscellany, the Poetical Rhapsody, under the label Anomos, which was changed in a later edition to Anonymoi. Other pseudonyms in common use were Anon, Anonimus, Ignoto, A.W., Incognitus, Immeritus and their variants. Then there were the hosts of initials. In general, there is no more unrewarding task than the attempt to identify the initials appended to sixteenth-century poems, for there can be no ------------------------------- 1. Reprinted Roxburghe Club, 1814.
guarantee of their genuineness. Some were arbitrarily selected from the alphabet, as Gascoigne on one occasion chose F .I. And some authors sent their work abroad sans name, sans pseudonym, sans initials:
Whether the poet omitted or obscured his name or not, he still seems to have felt obliged to excuse his appearance in print. Haste in rushing into print was the cardinal sin; if the poet could claim that some kind of decorous delay had been observed, the offence was apparently more venial. Francis Davison impressed. upon his readers that his own poems were 'made most of them sixe or seven yeeres since', that his brother Walter was 'not 18 yeeres olde when hee writt these Toyes', and that the supposed Anomos had 'written (as appeareth by diuers things to Syr Philip Sidney liuing, and of him dead) almost twentie yeers since'.(2) Davison's excuse is simultaneously an appeal to the reverence due to antiquity, an assurance of the observance of decorous delay, and an alibi on the grounds of youth. (3) Another variety ofde!ay, the scholar's, was capitalized by Thomas Watson. The writer of the glosses to Hecatompathia testified that the poet had lately perfected his' De Remedio Amoris 'to the good likinge of many that haue seene and perused it, though not fully to his owne fancy, which causeth him as yet to keepe it backe from the printe',(4) and Ascham said of Watson that he would never suffer his Absalom to go abroad 'and that onelie bicause, in locis paribus, Anapestus is twise or thrise vsed in stede of Iambus: A smal faulte, and such ---------------------------------------- 1. Barnabe Barnes, Parthenophil and Parthenophe (1593?).
one as perchance would neuer be marked, no neither in Italie nor France.'(l) Alternatively, friends could be blamed for 'ouer rash and unaduised printing', an excuse adopted by Alexander Neuyle for his Oedipus, and Henry Roberts for his Defiance to Fortune. The commonest formula for excusing the appearance of poetry in print was, indeed, that of a reluctant surrender to the insistence of friends. 'Write for the Stage?' retorted Ovid Junior to Ovid Senior in Poetaster, 'Certainly not!'
Friends were legitimate scapegoats, as they always had much to do with the publication of poetry. It was at the 'mancyon' of Barclay's friend, John Bisshop of Exeter, the first reader of the work, that the Ship of Fools was 'publysshyd abrode and put to prent'. Robert Greene acted on behalf of his absent friend in publishing Lodge's Euphues Shadow. Friends could, therefore, be conveniently blamed for unauthorized publication, or, alternatively, could satisfactorily exonerate the poet by taking all the responsibility on their own shoulders. Alexander Bradshaw apologized to his brother Thomas, in a letter prefixed to the Shepherds Starre: I haue made bolde to publish the booke which you left me for my priuate vse. I was moued thereunto by your friends, and my fauorets heere in England. The matter is adiudged by some of learning, not to be vnworthie of the light. I meane not that light which you meant, when you gaue it mee to commit it to Vulcane.
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[146] the scapegoat friend to keep the poems 'from the view of all men'.(l) Direct treachery by friends in publishing a private manuscript was one alibi a poet could plead; another was the friends' irresistible insistence on publication. Edward Hake, for instance, was only persuaded to publish his Commemmoration (1575) after a conference at the home of a cousin, Edward Elliott, at which a learned neighbour took part. Again, where possible, documentary evidence in support of the alibi was provided by the publication of friends' letters, like those of Turberville and H. W. in Gascoigne's Posies, or Philaretes's letter to J. C. printed with Alcilia. These devices, inter alia, are parodied by Gabriel Harvey in the projected title-page of a book of verses on the death Of Gascoigne:
1. Thomas Blenerhasset was one poet who used this device for his continuation of the Mirror for Magistrates.
even the unexceptionable, and in at least three instances the publication of religious verse was attributed, with some bashfulness, to the importunities of friends. It was at the 'motion of some wel-deserving friendes' that Barnabe Barnes committed 'to the publique tipographicall theatre of general censure' his Divine Centurie of Spirituall Sonnets.(l) Gervase Markham confessed that his Poem of Poems 'was not tuned for Vulgar Musicke, but thought to haue beene reserued for a priuate Consort, onely no we cotnmaunded by those which may compell, it is made publique',(2) And Matthew Parker's Psalms, which were also originally intended for private reading, were finally sent abroad when 'frendes requests' caused the poet to relent.(3) It was evidently not unworthiness of subject so much as temerity in achieving print that obliged poets to produce these apologetic defences. A poet who sought print was expected, in addition, to overflow with professions of modesty. William Warner described his Albions England as a 'thriftles trauell which the request of Friends did importune me to performe, and I with small or no fancie at all do now publish', It was customary to disparage poems as 'trifles' and 'toys', and printed books as mere 'pamphlets'. This modesty was different from the 'medieval' humility of, say, William Forrest, who declared that he could not produce 'fyne manchet':
Forrest's was a conventional humility, within the pattern and terminology of a literary tradition. The modesty of the typical Tudor poet, in print, seems to arise from his feeling that he lies outside the literary tradition. And the attempt to gloss over appearances so that he may seem to be within it results in an
l. Reprinted Feliconia, ed. T. Park (1815), JI. [148] ostentatious, enervating humility that paralysed any personal and independent statement of poetic purpose.(1) Churchyard apologized for the 'trifles' of his first collected edition(2) by adopting the title Churchyardes Chippes, parading his humility on the title-page, so that he should 'beguile no man with better opinion, than the substaunce it selfe doth import'. John Dickenson preferred to pay homage to the necessity for modesty in his mottoes --est labor in minimis, or breuissima, gratissima, or est aliquid levibus depingere stria nugis. Alternatively, the poet would doff his cap at the literary community into whose midst he was intruding. Ulpian Fulwell, for instance, in a work aptly called the Arte of Flatterie, adopted a common formula, when he professed not to be 'the meetest man to take this charge in hand', but ventured 'to call the fine force of writers that now swarme in England, to leaue the current handling of Venus Pageants (wherein they shew their excellency) and prosecute this'. In the first edition of his Sir Francis Drake, Charles Fitzgeffrey had ventured to omit an epistle to the reader. But it was in the epistle that the poet had most opportunity to observe the conventions of decorum, and in the second edition Fitzgeffrey felt obliged to make amends: 'Impute it rather to timiditie, in too little daring, then to temeritie, in too much presuming on thy clemencie.'(3) Any device at all, no matter how oblique, was in order, for the observance of the rules of the game was more important than credibility. Anything that would lend grace to humility, any excuse at all, was better than appearing in print, naked and unabashed. (4) The more detached and disinterested a poet could appear to be, the slighter the stigma on the printed book. Fitzgeffrey claimed ----------------------------------------------- 1. Comparative sincerity is, of course, irrelevant. Tudor modesty may derive, in part, from an outsize inferiority complex engendered by the class divisions and denigrations of the day, but the real issue is that Forrest, whose poems were never printed, was writing for a Chaucerian manuscript audience, whereas the Tudor poet who had got into print was apologizing for transgressing the bounds of his proper manuscript audience by allowing his books to be printed. 2. This edition appeared in 1575, long before Churchyard had acquired that unusual pride in his canon and his fertility noticeable in his later years.
Having acquitted himself from any charge of self-interest, Hake goes on to elaborate the reasons for his modesty: It is not meete that we should cloye the worlde, with to many bookes of weake handling: especially, whiles the learned trauailes and profitable labours of worthye writers are fayne to keepe the doore (as I may terme it) or, which is more, lie buried in silence. (5)
II It is not too much to say that a consciousness of the stigma of print pervades the whole of sixteenth-century poetry. But, whereas in the case of the Court poets the distaste for the publicity of print was genuine and profound, in the case of the professionals the coyness was largely assumed and superficial. The contradiction deserves a fuller analysis. Why was it that the Tudor Courtier adopted so casual an attitude to the poems he wrote so brilliantly? There would seem to be no inherent reason why a courtier-poet should be indifferent to a wider reading public. The poets of Augustus's Court had wooed the applause of posterity with considerable pertinacity. And on the other hand why did the professional poet find it necessary to pretend to be behaving like a courtier? If the coyness was assumed, a matter of almost meaningless ritual, why was it necessary to assume it? It will be convenient to begin with the Court poets. Tudor poetry centred in the Court because Tudor life centred in the Prince. Like the other despots of the Renaissance the Tudor required good servants --adaptable agents capable of coping with any emergency, in war or in peace-- whom they were prepared to reward generously. The ideal Courtier became the
1 Heroycall Epistles, 1567, The Translator to his Muse.
In this way poetry became an intimate affair. Within the Court circle it was used to grace and comment on virtually every happening in life, from birth to death, and the presentation of a Christmas gift to the launching of a war. It was the agent of flattery, of ego-titillation, of love-making, and of condolence. It was the means whereby the Courtier discussed experience and pondered the approach of death. Sir Henry Wotton said that Robert Devereux used to think in verse --to 'evaporate his thoughts in a sonnet' was his common way. More recently, Agnes Latham has said of Raleigh that 'his verses were a strange appeal, a part of that strange charm with which he won the Queen's favour, a spiritual adornment, a manifestation of riches and beauty, like his pale satins and the pearl eardrops he wore in his ears'.(3) Raleigh's poems, though there are only thirty-four now extant that can be attributed with any certainty to him, illustrate the diversity of purposes to which the Courtier put poetry. There are poems to the Queen; one he had slipped into 'my lady Laiton's pocket'; one poem 1. Castiglione's personal influence was important enough in itself. II Cortegiano was published in Venice in 1527 and was widely read throughout Europe in Italian. Wyatt was one of the English Courtiers who had met, and been influenced by, the author in Italy. Thomas Hoby's English translation, which reached four editions during the reign of Elizabeth, was a best-seller of its kind. But Castiglione was neither hierophant nor law-giver; more importantly, he was a codifier of Italian customs, the pattern other European noblemen were anxious to learn and follow. 2. The Caurryer of Count Baldessar Castilia, trans. T. Hoby, ed. J. E. Ashbee, 1900. See pp. 73, 302, 383, etc. [152] was intended to be his own epitaph, another is an elegy on Sidney's death; others are alleged to have been written by him the night before his death; there are literary exercises, trials of wits with his friends, like his reply to Marlowe's Passionate Shepherd, his poem The Lie to which other poets wrote replies, or the acrostic of three poems in one In the grace of wit, of tongue and face; there are commendatory verses for writers like Spenser, Gorges and Gascoigne; and there are poems written in sentimental or sententious moments. Similar poems are to be found in the works of all the Court poets and their imitators. Essentially, such poems belonged to the social group for whom they were written. It never struck Raleigh, for example, that he should preserve his poems for another audience. Most of them, as a result, are lost. It was of the essence of Castiglione's advice to the Courtier poet that poetry should be private: If by reason of his other busines beside, or of his slender studie, he shall not atteine unto that perfection that hys writinges may be worthye much commendation, let him be circumspect in keeping them close, least he make other men to laugh at him. Onely he may show them to a friend whom he may trust, for at the leastwise he shall receive so much profite, that by this exercise he shall be able to geve his judgement upon other mennes doinges.(1)
------------------------------ 1. Op. cit., pp. 73-4.
one or other major group, on the fringe of which they might secure a transcription of a poem and thereby pretend intimacy within the circle, or else set up imitative circles elsewhere. Thus, Thomas Bastard had his admiring circle of country gentry, Richard Robinson of Alton was the centre of a group in Cheshire,(1) and Humphrey Gifford, the Headmaster of Barnstaple Grammar School, and William Vallans, the Hereford antiquary, were members of local circles of gentlemen and gentlewomen. Whether poetry was produced in isolation, in the quiet of a study, in prison, in idleness or 'furtive hours', on guard in a lonely outpost, or in melancholy solitude, or whether it was produced as the direct result of companionship, competition, social communion and group suggestion, it found its first audience in the circle of friends. And whether it was communicated orally, or through the mutual exchange of scripts, or by correspondence, the recognized medium of communication was the manuscript, either in the autograph of the author, or in the transcription of a friend. The Court poet did not usually envisage a wider audience. The transcription of transcriptions --by friends of friends, by relatives of fortunate possessors of a copy, by literary dilettantes and satellites, by commonplace-book keepers, and by other unconnected enthusiasts --was a process with which he had nothing to do. The poet himself could never tell how many copies were abroad, nor their accuracy, their validity, nor even whether during transmission his own name, or another's, had been appended. He had very little control therefore over the ultimate destinations of his poems, and there was next to nothing he could do to prevent an occasional manuscript from falling into the hands of a compiler who might print it. The poets who set the pattern of the times were not normally interested in any of the advantages print could bring. They had no interest in the printed-book audience or a wider circle of readers than the friends to whom they communicated their experiences. For instance, they were not deeply concerned with posterity. A courteous modesty restrained them from contemplating the preservation of their work. Greville's project for a posthumous edition of his poems was half-hearted, and ------------------------------- 1. See A Golden Mirror, 1589, ed. T. Corser, Chetham Society, XXIII, 1851.
The appeals to posterity were made by the professional poets. There is Churchyard's anxiety over his canon;" there is Daniel's disgruntled hope that his Civil Wars might
But it is significant that such appeals are exceptional even among the professional poets. The answer, then, to the problem of the casual attitude adopted by the Tudor Courtier towards his poetry lies in his fundamental poetic purpose --the communication of experience within a limited group of intimate friends. This purpose the -------------------------------------- 1 Works of Fulke Greville, ed. A, B. Grosart, 1870, vol. III, pp.. 20-1. 3. "Churchyards Challenge, 1593, Dedication to Sir John Woller.
professional poet, with his eye on personal profit, social promotion and a national reputation, could not share. His problem was to pursue his different aims without ceasing to look and write as much like a Courtier as possible, and without thereby forfeiting the sympathy and interest of the courtly and patronistic audience in whom his social aspirations rested. Gabriel Harvey's fear that his Verlayes might be published by Spenser arose from his apprehension that they might be hawked at Bartholomew or Stourbridge Fair by a balladmonger crying I pray you will you see any freshe newe bookes? Looke, I beseeche you, for your loove and buie for your moonye. Let me yet borrowe on crackd groate of your purse for this same span new pamflett. I wisse he is an University man that made it, and yea highly commended unto me for a greate scholler. And then, moaned Harvey, What greater and more odious infamye, in one of my standinge in the Universitye and profession abroade then to be reckoned in the Baccheroule of English Rimers?' Suppose I am mistaken for a writer of broadside ballads! This was the risk the middle-class poet ran who ventured into print. It was to obviate such infamy, and to remove every possibility of antagonizing powerful patrons, that the professional poets fortified every possible claim they had to gentility. The aspirant to social promotion and the patronage of the gentry could not afford to be considered a red nose fiddler or an ignorant ale knight, one of the 'Vncountable rabble', the 'reakhellye route of our ragged rymers', 'the frye of wooden rhythmours ... neauer enstructed in any grammar schoole, not atayning too thee paringes of thee Latin or Greek tongue'.(2) Moreover, the printer wanted the best catchpenny display of nobility on his title-pages, so that both poet and printer were agreed on the need to emphasize gentility. One miscellany, the Phoenix Nest, in compliance with the demands of modesty, omitted the names ---------------------------------------- 1. Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, 1573-80, ed. E. J. L. Scott, Camden Society, Second Series; XXXIII, 1884, pp. 59-60.
of its authors, while, in compliance with the demands of gentility, noting his rank after the initials of each poet. On its title-page, readers were assured that the book was built vp with the most rare and refined workes of Noble men, worthy Knights, gallant Gentlemen, Masters of Arts, and braue Schollers. A typical claim to gentility is reflected in virtually every page of John Grange's Golden Aphroditis (1577). On the title page the author was described as Gentleman, Student in the Common Lawe of Englande. In a prefatory note Grange claimed that the book was only printed after a first manuscript circulation to which 'certen yong Gentlemen' were privy. The book was addressed to the 'Courtelike Dames and Ladie-like Gentle women', and was commended by a Master of Arts. And the poems themselves have titles like' A valiant yong Gentleman. .. bewayleth his former life in this order', 'A Gentleman seeing his brother desirous to goe to the seas, wrote these verses', 'the Description of the loue of a Gentleman and Gentlewoman', etc. etc. One of Arnold Bennett's characters once described the tabloid newspaper as written 'by errand-boys for errand-boys'. John Grange's poetry, and its kind, was written by gentry, for gentry and about gentry. At any rate, that was the impression the printed book sought to achieve. The claim to gentility had, of course, some objective validity. Of the writers in verse, major and minor, who were alive in the sixteenth century and whose social status is known, more ----------------------------
Spenser's career as a civil servant, [or example, was built upon printed poems. Wood attributes Sir John Davies'", appointment as Attorney-General in Ireland entirely to King James's liking for NoSCI! 7'eip.\'um." Danicl, alrc;l(ly a Crool11 or the Chamber by virtue or roy;u palronage, earned Il'om llis Panegyricke Conct;ratlllatorJl a (~ommi"""ion to wrilc ;t m;tsque and the post of licenser or the Queen's Revels in I G04. Hunnis W,tS on one occasion rewarded with an appointment as toll-taker on London Bridge, a sinecure he promptly converted to cash to the value of £40. The most meteoric rise to affluence was that of the professional balladist, William Grey, whose verses won him promotion to the status of esquire, a seat in Parliament, the post of Chamberlain and Receiver in the Court of General Surveyors, and gifts of land and property in Reading which made him owner of two of the three inns in the town, 197 houses, tenements and closes out of the 518 then in existence, four corn mills and two fulling mills." The privileged positions occupied by such men as William Baldwin, Richard Edwards, John Heywood, Nicholas Udall, Abraham Fraunce, and many others depended in large measure on their ability to write ------------------------ 1. The State of England, 1600, ed. F. J. Fisher, Camden Miscellany, XVI, 1936, [158] poetry, an ability first impressed upon their patrons by public play or printed book. Churchyard, Googe, Drayton, Turberville" Gascoigne, and Lodowick Lloyd were others who emerged from obscurity by virtue of their printed books; their promotion from social anonymity was witnessed by increasing grandeur of self-advertisement on successive title-pages. Men could not live by poetry alone, and the professional poets were always ready to serve their patrons in various military and civil capacities,(l) but poetry was the means whereby the individual's claims were brought to the attention of the potential patron. It is not too much to say that the ability to write poetry of the right kind was assumed to be indicative that the poet was the right kind of person to enter the service of the Court or a noble house. The commercial advantages of having poetry printed are exemplified in some of the practices of the times. A printed book had the great advantage over a manuscript of facilitating multiple dedications. In his Challenge Churchyard printed fifteen different pieces, almost all of them dedicated to different patrons. In the same work he advertised that his last book would be called Ultimum Vale and would contain 'twelue long tales for Christmas, dedicated to twelue honorable Lords'. Joshua Sylvester dedicated his Epistle Consolatorie to Viscount Lisle and his lady, their son Sir Robert Sidney, Lady Wroth and their other daughters, and 'all the Noble Sidneys and Semi Sidneys'! One sonnet appended to Betulia's rescue was addressed to no fewer than sixteen different ladies of the Court. Drayton, Drant, Gervase Markham, and Barnabe Barnes used similar multiple dedications. Spenser added to the Faerie Queene, to Thomas Warton's disgust, sixteen dedicatory sonnets to influential Privy Councillors and patronesses, and an additional omnibus sonnet to 'all the gratious and beautifull Ladies in the Court'. More outrageously, John Davies of Hereford appended thirty dedicatory sonnets to his book, as well as omnibus sonnets to the 'intire body of the Kinge's Maiesties most honourable
1 It is surprising how many professional poets, many of them, one would imagine, grossly unsuited to the task, became agents or spies of the Crown or a noble patron. Among the dramatists employed in this way were Marlowe, Kyd, Jonson and Tourneur, and among the non-dramatic poets, Grey, Chaloner, Turberville, [159]
III It is time to draw the critical corollaries. A convenient point of departure is the notion, generally accepted by Tudor poets
Giles Fletcher the elder, extending the field to include the best of the Courtier's satellites, believed that there were some gentlemen in the Inns of Court, 'and some Gentlemen like studentes in both Vniuersities, whose learning and bringing up, together with their fine natures, made so sweet a harmonie, as without partialitie, the most iniurious will preferre them before all others: and therefore they onelie are fittest to write ofLove'.(2) Even a very stupid poet like John Soowthern, full of his own importance, recognized that
That these phrases are not merely intended for conventional adulation is indicated by Sidney's agreement in the Defence of Poesie:
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2 Poems, ed. A. B. Grosart, 1876, p. 8.
Sidney's 'professors of learning', with whom he contrasts the Court poets, are presumably the professional poets. It is not certain whom he had in mind, but it is reasonable to assume that the objects of his criticism included such men as Watson, Gascoigne, Turberville, Harvey and perhaps Spenser. The essential point in terms of social analysis is the negative one that these ornate and overdecorated poets were not Courtiers. But the kind of poetry that they were trying to write was, it is interesting to note, Court poetry. Sidney describes it as 'that Lyricall kind of Songs and Sonets' -a direct allusion to Tottel's Miscellany (Songes and Sonettes, written by the ryght honourable Lorde Henry Haward late Earle of Surrey, and other).(1) These middle-class University-educated poetasters were apparently trying to write in the vein of Wyatt and Surrey. Unfortunately they were less interested in what they were saying than in the manner in which they could say it. Sidney's catalogue of their deficiencies includes insincerity, literariness, affectations of diction, excessive alliteration, and a mechanical use of the figures of speech of the rhetoricians. It can be summed up in the one word unnaturalness. A modern critic has recently criticized Elizabethan poetry in similar terms. Speaking of Spenser, C. S. Lewis has said: -------------------
So far from being a poet whose excellent and sustained mastery of language is his only merit, he is a poet whose chief fault is the uncertainty of his style. He can be as prosaic as Wordsworth: he can be clumsy, unmusical, and flat. On this side, and on this side only, his work requires historical extenuation. He wrote in an age when English poetry had reached its stylistic nadir, the age of 'hunting the letter', of violent over-emphasis and exquisitely bad taste. ...1 The abnormal and pedantic experiments of the day must be attributed to the professional poets. Flirtations with Latin hexameter rhythms or with archaisms or with the cultivation of 'inkhorne termes' were rejected by the Court poets. Sidney's 'professors of learning' were always over-anxious to impress their virtuosity upon the reader, and, as a result, they were very prone to cultivate the recondite and to despise the simple, or to assimilate elements alien to the English language and reject the vernacular. It is difficult to imagine the Court poet committing, for instance, the solecisms of Gabriel Harvey, who wrote two prefaces to the Trimming of Thomas Nashe, Gentleman, one to the 'learned' in Latin, the other to the 'simple' in English, or the condescensions of Watson, who printed side by side a Latin poem Meliboeus, dedicated to a man, and its English equivalent, dedicated to a woman, or displaying the bragadocchio of James Sandford, whose Garden of Pleasure was an anthology not only of his English poems but also of his verses
in Greek, Latin, Italian and French. But the Court's cultivation and stimulation of literature in the vernacular was not due merely to literary delight in the 'store of monasillables'. There were good political, sociological and indeed religious reasons why it was desirable to encqurage the writing and reading of English. And the Courtiers lived at the heart of the nation where State policies were formulated and all the activities of the State initiated. The importance of their social position in influencing the very nature and purpose of everything they did is emphasized by a modern critic, R. M. Sargent, in reference in particular to Dyer: Tusser with his farm idiom, Googe with his academic pedantry, Gascoigne with his legal and military back ground, none of these was wholly in the mainstream of the mother tongue. Of the Elizabethan lyricists, Dyer was the first as Nashe pointed out 'that purified Poetrie from Arts pedantisme, and that instructed it to speake courtly'. Dyer knew how to write a living language --and that the best English of the day. The best English of the day was, as Puttenham said, 'the vsual speach of the Court, and that of London and the shires lying about London within Ix myles and not much aboue'.(1) It was Queen's English, and not the language of the Universities, or the lawyers, or the other professions. As far as the Court poets ------------------------ [164] deprived of many of the opportunities for the achievement of a natural, healthy style, and, as a consequence, he was forced back upon literariness and bookish habits. There is a moral to be drawn from this investigation. A purely literary approach can tabulate the differences between the Court poets and the professionals. It cannot explain them. If literary history is to be history in anything more than name and at present we are still in the 'chronicle' stage-criticism must be supplemented by sociology. Why were the professional poets of the Tudor period the victims of an inflated and unnatural style? Because in their social circumstances the writing of poetry was essentially an act of self-advertisement. As careerists their concern was to ensure that as many people as possible should realize how different they were from other members of the middle class. Why were the Court poets the owners of a simple and effective natural style? Because their poetry, having no economic function to perform, was able to restrict itself to the true function of poetry and reflect the society in which it originated, honestly and perspicuously. No doubt that is not the whole story. The purpose of this article is not to present a complete Revised Version of the evolution of English poetry in the sixteenth century. It is intended only to sow certain doubts about the Authorized Version that is still current in literary textbooks. In the past the answers have perhaps been wrong because the right questions have not been asked. One question which it is suggested must in future be asked in any discussion of a particular Tudor poet is 'Did he write for a manuscript audience or for a printed-book audience?' The reaction to the stigma of print is a test that may perhaps deserve a place even in the critic's laboratory. |
