Biography Nicholas Breton
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Afterword: Writing Coteries, Reading Coteries
Afterword: Writing Coteries, Reading Coteries Helen Hackett Reading the essays in this collection is like joining a lively conversation. Members of different scholarly communities with different specialisms— perhaps we could call them coteries?—have gathered here to evaluate the productiveness of the term ‘coterie’ in their particular areas of expertise. Their findings suggest that it may be applied to widely various settings and groupings: family networks; clusters of writers around a patron or mentor-figure; sets of friends; members of a particular college or legal inn; customers of a particular tavern or coffee house; or participants in a fash- ionable salon. Some contributors are suspicious of the word. Mary Ellen Lamb, for instance, finds that although Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke and her son William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, are often seen as the centres of coteries, the term may obscure the precise dynamics of their interactions with other writers: the tensions in the Countess’s patronage relationships; the extensiveness of the literary inti- macies of her son. For Felicity James, on the other hand, importing the word ‘coterie’ to criticism of Romantic literature is a useful way of disrupt- ing conventional models of solitary authorship and foregrounding instead the sociable writing practices of a figure such as Charles Lamb. Christine Gerrard reminds us that no two coteries are the same, and each one has its own particular dynamic; it seems also to be the case that critical usages of the term ‘coterie’ can differ widely. What conclusions can we draw from placing different coteries and different approaches to coteries side by side? My own interest in coteries mainly arises from the literary activities of two particular seventeenth-century women. -
Willobie His Avisa
Brief Chronicles Vol. III (2011) 135 On the Authorship of Willobie His Avisa Robert R. Prechter, Jr. n September 1594, someone calling himself Hadrian Dorrell and claiming to write “From my chamber in Oxford” edited a volume of verse titled Willobie IHis Avisa (also labeled Willobies Avisa or just Avisa), which he attributed to “M. Henry Willobie.” Dorrell claims that his “very good frend” Willobie had left the country in “her Majesties service” and “chose me amongst the rest of his friends” to give “the key of his study, and the use of all his bookes till his returne.” Dorrell says that he discovered the manuscript among Willobie’s papers and decided to name it and “publish it without his consent.”1 Intriguing facts attend this book, not the least of which is that state authorities saw fit to order it removed from circulation. Henry Willobie, moreover, never wrote anything aside from this impressively intricate project. These and other mysterious circumstances have long intrigued and befuddled critics. A Tangle of Mysteries Scholars agree that the three names of writers whose material prefaces the first edition of Avisa are probably pseudonymous. Researchers cannot find a body to go with the editor’s moniker, so “The name of Hadrian Dorrell was apparently assumed. No Oxford student bearing that appellation is known to the university registers.”2 “Abell Emet” and “Contraria Contrariis,” whose names appear beneath commendatory poems, are too fantastic to be other than pseudonyms. Brief Chronicles Vol. III (2011) 136 On the other hand, most scholars have assumed that the name Henry Willobie indicates a real person by that name. -
New Light on Willobie His Avisa and the Authorship Question
New Light on Willobie His Avisa and the Authorship Question John Hamill n an interesting and well-written essay, “On the Authorship of Willobie His Avisa ” ( Brief Chronicles , Fall 2011, 135-67), Robert Prechter asserts that this I intriguingly anonymous Elizabethan verse novella was written by George Gascoigne, a soldier-poet who died in 1577. Prechter also argues that its publica- tion in 1594 was arranged by Nicholas Breton, Gascoigne’s stepson. Following B.N. De Luna’s proposal in The Queen Declined (1970), but with certain varia- tions, Prechter goes on to support the identification of Avisa as Queen Elizabeth I, and the characters in the poem as her historical suitors. However, unlike De Luna, Prechter identifies the fifth suitor, “H. W.”, as Don Juan of Austria, a claim origi- nally advanced by W. Ron Hess, and “H. W.’s” friend, “W. S.”, as Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, the leading candidate in the SAQ. The connection Prechter makes between Gascoigne, Breton and Willobie His Avisa is an outstanding piece of research that answers many questions about the poem’s origination and publication. But I believe he is mistaken about the identity of several of the poem’s pseudonymous characters, and that he overlooks the evi- dence that Breton revised his stepfather’s work and added the narrative about the fifth suitor, H.W. I believe this mysterious figure was Henry Wriothesley, third earl of Southampton. A Love Triangle In “The Dark Lady and Her Bastard” ( Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter , Winter 2005), I argued that Willobie His Avisa was a cleverly disguised exposé of a bi- sexual, triangular love affair involving Edward de Vere (i.e., “Shakespeare”), his wife Elizabeth Trentham, and Henry Wriothesley.