THE EARLY MODERN DREAM VISION (1558-1625): GENRE, AUTHORSHIP AND TRADITION by EMILY BUFFEY A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY The Department of English University of Birmingham, May 2016 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis offers the first full-length investigation into the reception and influence of the dream vision poem in the early modern period. One of the main aims of this research is to challenge the assumption that the dream vision was no longer an attractive, appreciated or effective form beyond the Middle Ages. This research breaks new ground by demonstrating that the dream vision was not only a popular form in the post-Reformation period, but was a major and enduring means of literary and political expression throughout the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. This thesis is therefore part of an ongoing scholarly attempt to reconfigure the former aesthetic judgements that have dominated scholarship since C. S. Lewis dubbed the sixteenth century as the ‘drab age’ of English verse. The main focus is upon three writers who have been largely ignored or misunderstood by modern scholarship: Barnabe Googe (1540-1594), Richard Robinson (fl. 1570-1589) and Thomas Andrewe (fl. 1600-1604). Through close analysis of their work, this thesis demonstrates that the dream vision could both inform and was greatly informed by contemporary political, cultural and literary developments, as well as the period’s relationship with its literary and historical past. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS page i LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ii A NOTE ON THE TEXTS iii GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1 I ALTER CHAUCERUS, ALTER GOGEUS: BARNABE GOOGE 50 II ‘I KEEPE MY WATCHE, AND WARDE’: RICHARD ROBINSON 123 III FORTUNA AND VIRTÙ: THOMAS ANDREWE 190 CONCLUSION 264 BIBLIOGRAPHY 274 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis has been a long time in the making, and there are several people, without whose help and support, it would have never arrived at completion. I would first of all like to thank my friends and family for their support over the last four years. For his patience, kindness and sense of humour, my thanks go especially to Adam. I am also very grateful for the assistance provided by a number lecturers and colleagues at the University of Birmingham. My thanks go particularly to Hugh Adlington, David Griffith, Tom Lockwood, Wendy Scase, Martin Wiggins and Gillian Wright for their advice and comments at various stages of my research. My thanks also go to Claire Harrill for her help in translating a number of Latin passages, and to Claude Fretz for his insight and knowledge. I am also grateful for the assistance provided by staff at the libraries of the University of Birmingham, the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon and the British Library. I am especially indebted to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding the final two years of my PhD. I also wish to thank the following people for their help in various other aspects of my research: Alan Bryson, Nick Kingsley, Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, Tricia McElroy, Steve Mansfield, Felicity Maxwell, Sue Niebrzydowski, Liz Oakley-Brown, Chris Penney, Mike Pincombe, William Racicot, Martin Robb, Daniel Starza Smith and Alison Wiggins. A shorter and slightly altered version of Chapter Two was published in the Journal of Early Modern Studies 4 (2015). I am grateful to the editors, William C. Carroll and Jeanne Clegg, and the anonymous peer reviewers, for their advice when writing this article. Finally, I would like to thank my supervisors, Gillian Wright and David Griffith. As is naturally the case with any piece of research, the direction that one takes is not always the same as the direction that was originally intended. This thesis has taken me in a number of directions that I had not always fully anticipated, so I count myself extremely fortunate to have had two such dedicated, knowledgeable and patient individuals to guide me along the way. Although no amount of thanks could ever repay the time that Gillian and David have devoted to seeing this project through to completion, as a token of my appreciation, it is to them that I would like to dedicate this thesis. i LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BD Geoffrey Chaucer, Book of the Duchess (all Chaucer quotations are taken from Larry D. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) BHL Bess of Hardwick’s Letters Online www.bessofhardwick.org CSP Calendar of State Papers EEBO Early English Books Online http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home HF House of Fame HRI Origins The Origins of Early Modern Literature www.hrionline.ac.uk/origins/ Macr. Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, ed. William Harris Stahl, revised edn (New York: Columbia University; London: Oxford University Press, 1990) MED Middle English Dictionary Online www.quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography www.oxforddnb.com OED Oxford English Dictionary www.oed.com PF Parliament of Fowls STC Alfred W. Pollard, G. R. Redgrave, William A. Jackson and Katherine F. Pantzer, ed., A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640, 2nd edn revised and enlarged (London: Bibliographical Society, 1976-91) Wing Donald Wing, ed., A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America and of the English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641-1700, 2nd edn revised and enlarged (New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America, 1982-98) ii A NOTE ON THE TEXTS All texts in this thesis are taken from facsimiles of their original editions and, where necessary, the originals have been consulted. Original spellings and typography, including italics, have also been maintained although, where modern editions have been consulted, I have used the spelling and typography from the stated edition. All quotations from Shakespeare are taken from Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, eds., The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 3rd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). All quotations from the Bible are cited from the King James Version in modern English spelling. iii GENERAL INTRODUCTION THE ENGLISH DREAM VISION: FROM ‘MEDIEVAL’ TO ‘EARLY MODERN’ I was made priuie to his counsell and secret meaning… as also in sundry other works of his which albeit I know he nothing so much hateth, as to promulgate, yet thus much haue I aduentured vpon his frendship, him selfe being for long time furre estraunged, hoping that this will the rather occasion him to put forth diuers other excellent works of his which slepe in silence, as his Dreames, his Legendes, his Court of Cupide, and sondry others; whose commendations to set out were verye vaine; the thinges though worthy of many yet being knowen to few. ‘The Letter of E. K.’, The Shepheardes Calender (1579).1 The search for Spenser’s lost ‘Dreames’ presents an interesting case of literary detective-work.2 In 1928, W. R. Renwick saw in Spenser’s Ruines of Time (published in 1591) ‘a relic of the Dreames and Pageants mentioned by Spenser and Harvey in their letters’.3 The Ruines of Time has also been described by Richard Danson Brown as a dream vision due to its preoccupation with ‘the random shifts of voice and environment characteristic of actual dreams’.4 Along with the ‘Legendes’ and the ‘Court of Cupide’, the ‘Dreames’ cited by E. K. in his prefatory epistle may also be a sign of Spenser’s first experiments with medieval literary form.5 The dream vision poem is often structured around a scene of inauguration or instruction and, in many cases, embraces the 1 Richard A. McCabe, ed., Edmund Spenser: The Shorter Poems (London: Penguin Books, 1999), pp. 29-30. 2 The search began with Philo M. Buck’s 1908 essay, ‘Spenser’s Lost Poems’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 23.1 (1908), 80-99. For an overview of this search and several possible contenders for the lost ‘Dreames’, see the entry on ‘dreams’ by Carol Schreier Rupprecht in The Spenser Encyclopedia, ed. by A C. Hamilton (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), pp. 226-8. 3 W. R. Renwick, ed., Edmund Spenser’s Complaints (London: Scholartis, 1928), pp. 189-90. Both The Ruines of Time and the Visions (published in the 1591 Complaints) stem from Spenser’s 1569 translation of Jan van der Noodt’s Theatre for Voluptuous Worldlings, which includes an early incarnation of the Visions of Bellay (Spenser’s translation of Joachim Du Bellay’s Antiquitez du Rome, plus un Songe). Along with the Ruines of Time and the Visions of Bellay, the Complaints also includes the Visions of Petrarch, which itself owes a great deal to Marot’s 1544 translation of Petrarch’s Canzoniere 323 (‘Le Chant des Visions de Petrarque’). For an account of Spenser’s changes to Du Bellay’s original sequence, see Anne Coldiron, ‘How Spenser Excavates Du Bellay’s “Antiquitez”: Or, The Role of the Poet, Lyric Historiography, and the English Sonnet’, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 101.1 (2002), 41-67. 4 Richard Danson Brown, The New Poet: Novelty and Tradition in Spenser’s Complaints (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), pp.