AN EDITION OF BRITISH LIBRARY, ADDITIONAL MS 36529 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY EDWARD P. M. SMITH SCHOOL OF ENGLISH, LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD APRIL 2014 VOLUME II: COMMENTARY Vol. II 2 Vol. II CONTENTS Note on Conventions 4 Editorial Commentaries 5 Conclusion 344 Glossary of Rhetorical Terms 351 Appendices: Appendix 1: Textual Accuracy of the Shorter Wyatt Poems in P, D, E, NA1-2, and T1-2 352 Appendix 2: Textual Accuracy of Surrey Poems in P, T1, and T2 353 Appendix 3: John Harington of Stepney: ‘Of person Rare, Stronge Lymbes, and manly shapp’ 354 Appendix 4:John Harington of Stepney:‘Marvaylous be thie matcheles gyftes of mynde’ 355 Bibliography 356 3 Vol. II NOTE ON CONVENTIONS For all rhetorical terms used in the Commentary, see Glossary at the end of this volume. For all other abbreviations, see Sources and Abbreviations in Volume I. This edition does not provide a commentary for [64], Edmund Campion’s Latin poem Sancta salutiferi nascentia semina verbi. The Commentary therefore omits any entry for [64], and accordingly moves uninterrupted from [63] to [65]. 4 Vol. II EDITORIAL COMMENTARIES [1] HEROIDES 17 BY SIR THOMAS CHALONER (c. 1521-1565) Poem [1] is Sir Thomas Chaloner’s translation of Ovid, Heroides 17, the epistle of Helen to Paris. The subscription by Hand F claims Chaloner’s authorship, which Park accepted when he printed [1] from P in the 1804 edition of the Nugæ Antiquæ (NA3), II, pp. 372-389. Christopher Martin also included [1] as a Chaloner piece in his selection Ovid in English (1998). The poem is apparently unique to P, and constitutes the first full English translation of a poem from the Heroides. In 1567, George Turberville translated the whole of Ovid’s collection as The Heroycall Epistles of [...] Publius Ouidius Naso (STC 18939.5). Certain similiarities in phrasing suggest that he may have been acquainted with Chaloner’s poem (see below). Chaloner was a significant diplomat and writer who served under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. He was most probably educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, then a centre of humanist learning under the tutelage of Sir John Cheke and Sir Thomas Smith (see Venn and Venn, I, 1922: 315; à Wood, I, 1813: 346-347). Chaloner served under Thomas Cromwell in 1538, and undertook his earliest diplomatic role in 1540, when he attended the Imperial Diet at Regensburg as the secretary of the ambassador Sir Henry Knyvet, dedicatee of Chaloner’s first printed publication, a translation of a Latin guide to servants by Gilbert Cousin, Of The Office of Servavntes (1543; STC 5879). Thereafter, Chaloner served as special ambassador to France under Edward VI in 1553; was sent on diplomatic missions to Mary, Queen of Scots (1556) by Mary I; and, under Elizabeth I, took prominent diplomatic roles in Germany and Flanders (1558-1559) before attaining his most prestigious appointment as ambassador to Spain (1561-1565). Chaloner was also clerk of the Privy Council (1545-1551) and was knighted on the battlefield by Edward Seymour, Protector Somerset, after the Battle of Pinkie in September, 1547. He died in 1565. For further biographical details, see ODNB (‘Chaloner, Sir Thomas, the elder’). Chaloner’s political and writing careers brought him in the ambit of several of the other poets in P. He translated Cheke’s Latin homily of St John Chrysostom as An Homilie of Saint Iohn Chrysostome (1544; STC 14637), and also made the first English translation of Erasmus’ The praise of folie (1549; STC 10500). Chaloner seems to have known both Thomas Phaer and Wyatt, and included epitaphs of both men in the posthumously-published De Rep. 5 Vol. II Anglorum (1579; STC 4938), sigs Z2v-Z4r. Chaloner and Phaer may have known each other through their ties with the Myrror for Magistrates circle of poets, though the extent of Phaer’s involvement in this group, if any, is difficult to establish. Chaloner’s contribution to the Myrrour was the tragedy of Richard II. This implies that he was composing English verse in at least the early 1550s. In The Elizabethan Verse Libel (forthcoming), Steven W. May and Alan Bryson have attributed a libel to Chaloner which he composed during his embassy to Spain in the early 1560s. It is possible that [1] dates from a similar period of the 1550s to early 1560s. The Latin subscription ‘eques auratus’ confirms that the poem was copied, if not translated, after 1547, the year of Chaloner’s knighthood. Chaloner’s decision to translate an epistle from the Heroides coincided with a period when English writers were returning to Ovid, culminating in the publication of Arthur Golding’s The. xv. Bookes of P. Ouidius Naso, entytuled Metamorphosis (1567; STC 18956). Heroides 17 is one the six ‘double epistles’, featuring letters by classical male and female lovers, which were appended to the initial group of fifteen single Heroides written solely by the wronged female lovers back to their male paramours. As E. J. Kenney points out, Ovid’s authorship of the double epistles is disputed (Kenney, 1996: 20-26). It is possible that Chaloner originally coupled [1] with Paris’ preceding letter to Helen, Heroides 16, which has apparently not survived. Heroides 17 charts Helen’s frame of mind as she ponders whether or not to go with Paris to Troy, a decision which catalyses the Trojan war. The epistle makes several proleptic references to this event: see in particular ll. 239-240, 246, and 255-256. Duncan F. Kennedy discusses the wider tendency of Ovid’s heroines to anticipate future historical episodes (Kennedy, 2002: 226-229). Chaloner’s characterisation of Helen in [1] differs from Ovid’s in two principal details. First, he amplifies her preoccupation both with her own ancestry (l. 52), and that of Paris (l. 136). Second, he adds numerical details to Helen’s language (ll. 31, 72, and 131), who writes to Paris of both ‘broking’ (l. 113) and ‘treating’ (ll. 201, 263), and is attended by female ‘Counsayloures’ (l. 268) rather than maids. Taken together, these additions make Helen and Paris’ prospective love match a process of negotiating and bargaining one’s worth, of which Helen has a shrewd awareness. In his treatment of the politics and economics of love thus, Chaloner anticipates one of the central themes of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. With Chaucer’s Criseyde, Chaloner’s Helen shares a fear for her future reputation (see l. 34). In general, Chaloner updates Ovid for a Tudor audience, writing not only of privy councillors but also of ‘gentlenes’ (l. 9) and ‘knighthode’ (l. 117) amid numerous other anachronistic details. This is likewise a feature of [2], [3], and [15] in P, Thomas Phaer’s 6 Vol. II translation of Books 1-3 of the Aeneid. Chaloner uses ME archaicisms and turns of phrase to give the epistle, and Helen, a familiar resonance to his readership (e.g. l. 44: ‘lear’, l. 151: ‘mell’, and l. 178: ‘wot ner how’). One of his most consistent departures from the Latin is his almost uniform avoidance of antonomasia, through which Ovid describes people via epithet (e.g. Helen as ‘Tyndaridiis coniunx’, ‘Tyndareus’ daughter’). Chaloner prefers direct naming, a preference that he again shares with Phaer. This decision perhaps indicates the sparer attitude to rhetorical flair with is typical of mid-Tudor verse. Chaloner does, however, show an interest in the classical practice of patterning sounds chiasmically, as in l. 114. He translates Ovid’s proverbial phrases closely in ll. 139, 166, 190, and 263, and is not averse to giving some lines more of an aphoristic air than in the Latin, as in ll. 235-236. In form, Chaloner composes [1] in long-line couplets. These are an unusual reversal of the poulter’s measure pattern, and alternate between, loosely, one fourteen- and one twelve- or thirteen-syllable line per couplet. Chaloner may have aimed to reproduce in rhymed form Ovid’s hexametric line; he certainly attempted as closely as possible to produce a line-for-line translation, and matches his source by composing a total of 268 lines. Although Chaloner tends to writes accentual-syllabic lines, he does use weakly-stressed line-endings on occasion. See in particular ll. 5-6, 135, and 139-140. He also writes occasionally difficult or unmetrical lines, as in ll. 10, 18, 54, 166, and 245. Both Hand F and other later hands have elided or added words in order to improve the iambic pattern.1 The text of Heroides 17 cited in the glosses below is the Loeb text (1977: 224-243); the English translations, unless otherwise indicated, are by the Loeb editor Grant Showerman. 1 thy pistle] Helen’s letter (‘pistle’) is a response to Paris’ earlier missive (Heroides 16), in which he attempted to entice her to leave with him to Troy. During the exchange of letters, Paris is guest in the house of Helen’ husband Menelaus, who is absent from home. red] read suffred stayn] renders Ovid, ‘violarit’ (17.1: ‘profaned’), which Kenney notes has a connotation of rape (Kenney, 1996: 125) 2 wyn] gain, acquire (‘win’, v.1, 6a) 4 hostes] hostess 1 See the textual notes to [1] in Vol. I, pp. 63-72. 7 Vol. II 5-6 Was that...hyther] Helen’s rhetorical question differs from Ovid, whose phrase is a statement: ‘scilicet idcirco ventosa per aequora vectum | excepit portu Taenaris ora suo’ (17.5-6: ‘Of course it was for this that the Taenarian shore received you into its haven when tossed on windy tides’).