This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received 6 7-245 7 HINELY, Jan Lawson, 1936- THE SONNET SEQUENCE IN ELIZABETHAN POETRY. The Ohio State U niversity, Ph.D ., 1966 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan @ Copyright by Jan Lawson Hinely 1967 THE SONNET SEQUENCE IN ELIZABETHAN POETRY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University Ely Jan Lawson Hinely B.A., Midwestern University, 1957 M.A., The Ohio State University, 1958 The Ohio State University 1966 Approved by Adviser Department of Engl' PREFACE This dissertation should properly be dedicated to four people: to my parents, who encouraged, to Saralyn, who per servered, and to Bruce, who endured. I owe more than I can express to the unfailing courtesy, wide scholarship, and sound critical judgment of my adviser, Harold R. Walley, and wish as well to pay inadequate tribute to the inspiration and guidance, over several years, of Richard Altick, Ruth Hughey, James Logan, Francis Utley, and Harold Wilson. They have a part, always, in whatever scholarly excellence I may achieve. Finally, I wish to thank Mrs. John Kempt on, whose aid in preparing the manuscript was invaluable. VITA January 19. 1936 Bom - Philipsburg, Missouri 1957 .......... B.A., Midwestern University, Wichita Falls, Texas 1957-1961 .... Graduate Assistant, Department of English The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1958 .......... M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1961-1962 .... University Fellow, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1962-I963 .... Instructor, Division of Comparative Literature The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1963-1966 .... Instructor, Department of English The University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois PUBLICATIONS Using American English, with Leonard Newmark and Jerome Mintz. New York, 1964-. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page PREFACE................................................ ii VITA ....................... ................ ii± Chapter I. INTRODUCTION ................................ 1 II. PETRARCH ..................................... 16 in. PRECURSORS: WYATT, SURREY, W A T S O N ................ 86 IV. S I D N E Y ............. 124 V. THE D E L U G E ................................... 163 VI. SPENSER....................................... 213 VII. SHAKESPEARE .......................... 251 VHI. CONCLUSION ................................... 276 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................... 293 iv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Even the most casual student of the Renaissance sonnet sequences is struck at once by two things— their extreme popularity* and their short-lived vogue. Within the vital decade of the 15908s almost every Elizabethan poet who is remembered at all by the general student, and many who have been forgotten even by the specialist, wrote sonnets. They were more catching than the plague. Nor was this fever confined to England; it had been raging sporadically in Italy, France, and Spain since the fourteenth century. England's participation, though full- bodied, was tardy. It has been the prevalent custom for critics to consider the Elizabethan sonnet sequences rather neatly, and artificially, isolated from the rest of Ehglish poetry— a small though vigorous tributary rushing presumably toward some Dead Sea of sterile conventions. They are damned as "imitations, if not mere translations, "the last deca­ dent flickers" of the "European convention of courtly love, and a lEmile Legouis, A History of English Literature. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance, (New York, 194-2), p. 198. ^Patrick Cruttwell, The Shakespearean Moment (New York, I960), p. 4>3. 1 2 "treasure-trova of conventions, distorted . into sheer grotes- querie."3 From this welter the greater poets are uprooted; Sidney and Spenser find their champions, Drayton is allowed for the sake of Mone perfect sonnet," and Daniel receives a condescending pat on the back. Shakespeare is almost entirely disassociated. As for the other son­ neteers, as Ballet Smith remarks, "though it is a matter of curiosity that so many sonnets should have been written, . it can hardly be a matter of surprise that so many of them are so bad. Reading such remarks one is overtaken by a feeling similar to that felt watching a surrealist play— all is disconnected, isolated, the movements mechanical, sometimes predictable, but seemingly without underlying motivation. L. C. John is driven to lament, "One who would ascertain the impulse which prompted these poets to translate and imi­ tate Petrarch's sonnets can only say with Wyatt, 'In a nett I seke to hold the wynde, * . "5 Yet surely the critic need not feel reduced, when considering the multiplicity of sonnet cycles, to a series of be- gats. Given the fact of their overwhelming popularity, it seems reason­ able to suppose that some aspect or aspects of the sonnet sequence must 3John Livingston Lowes, Convention and Revolt in Poetry (New York, 1931). p. 151. ^Elizabethan Poetry; A Study in Conventions, Meaning and Expres­ sion (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. 1^2. 5xhe Elizabethan Sonnet Sequences; Studies in Conventional Con­ ceits (New York, 193$)* P* 5. 3 have held particular appeal for Renaissance poets. In some way the sonnet sequence supplied an opportunity lacking* or not as easily ac­ cessible, in other poetic genres of the time. Usually this appeal is ascribed to the least important attribute of the sequence— its con­ vention. Yet much that we now identify as "Petrarchan" convention belongs more properly to other schools of poetry, the Provencal, the Anacreontic, and the Ovidian. Indeed, one often indulges in a fruit­ less search through Petrarch for a cliche he is supposed to have orig­ inated. Both the dominant postures of feeling and the metaphorical dia­ lectic developed to accommodate these postures belong to the system of courtly love. While Petrarch no doubt assisted in the diffusion of aspects of the courtly love convention, no poet would have needed to imitate Petrarch to come at these materials. The most widely read pre- Petrarchan manual of "Petrarchan cliches , The Romance of the Rose, contains many of the favorite commonplaces of sonneteers. lines fifty through eighty of Part Two, for instance, multiply example after ex­ ample of the oxymoron so over-worked by a host of Renaissance lyric poets 5 Love is a troubled peace, an amorous war— A treasonous loyalty, disloyal faith— A madman's logic, reasoned foolishness— A pleasant peril in which one may drown— ° And so on for twenty-six more lines. Here also occur the "Petrarchan" devices of the God of Love shooting the lover through the eye into the ^Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose, trans. Harry ¥. Robbins, ed. Charles W. Dunn (New York, "193277-p. 95. h©art9 a long and quite typical account of the sufferings and behavior of the lover, and the much admired metaphor describing the lover as a mariner steering by a single star. The point is not worth laboring in more detail: Petrarch did not win his wide following because of the novelty of his subject matter. What is there, then, that influenced so many poets to experiment with the genre of the sonnet sequence? At the outset one must distin­ guish between those poets such as Wyatt and Surrey who experimented with the form of the sonnet or "quatorzain" in the general process of adapting romance rhyme schemes and meters to the English language and those poets who, able to profit from the early experiments, imitated the sonnet sequence itself. One may recall that the sonnet did not find noteworthy favor with English poets at the time of its first in­ troduction into English. Following the initial statement and practice in Tottel’s Songs and Sonnets, it was scarcely used until almost twenty- five years later when Sidney began the vogue of the sonnet sequence. Neither form nor convention, therefore, seems adequate answer to the problem of such widespread imitation. At best they are contributing elements. But if these considerations are removed, what then remains to be imitated? The answer, I believe, is found in a new poetic, a new attitude toward the function of poetry contained in Petrarch8s Can- zoniere. This attitude, when grasped, caused a re-evaluation of the relationship of the poet to his poetry and to his audience. The sonnet sequence obviously falls into the broad category of the lyric as distinguished from drama or epic. In the lyric the poet 5 is closer to the audience than in the other genres. This is not to say that he expresses himself more intimately, more personally, in the lyric than in the novel or the drama, but that his stance is one of appearing to do so. The one apparent character to whom the sentiments of the poem may be referred is the poet himself. The audience is not given characters in action but an utterance that forms its own unity. A,n lyrics, of whatever century, have this in common. Yet it would be naive to assume that all lyrics establish the same relationship be­ tween poet and audience. The lyric I may stand for what Coleridge called the "I-representative" or the "I-particular."7 To quote Nor- thrup Frye, "Lyric is . the poet presenting the image in relation to himself: it is to epos rhetorically, as prayer is to sermon. lyric is the hypothetical form of what in religion is called the I-Thou relationship. It is interesting to juxtapose this quotation with the statements of Rosamond Tuve, who writes specifically of Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry, "On the responsibility of the poet to himself, earlier poetic is silent. To judge by the poetry that was written, I do not think that the period found this question especially interesting. We are not to read poems as if language were a tool for announcing facts about a particular thou or I but a medium for intimating and ordering ^Quoted in M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (New York, 1958), p.