'The Inlegebill Scribling of My Imprompt Pen'
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Verweij, Sebastiaan Johan (2008) "The inlegebill scribling of my imprompt pen": the production and circulation of literary miscellany manuscripts in Jacobean Scotland, c. 1580-c.1630. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/329/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] ‘The Inlegebill scribling of my Imprompt pen’ The Production and Circulation of Literary Miscellany Manuscripts in Jacobean Scotland, c. 1580-c. 1630 Sebastiaan J. Verweij Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, February 2008 Department of Scottish Literature, Faculty of Arts, University of Glasgow © 2008 Sebastiaan Verweij i abstract ~ This thesis investigates the textual culture of early modern Scotland, as evident from three literary miscellany manuscripts produced and circulated in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. Each of the main three chapters will consider one miscellany manuscript in its complex totality, dealing with questions of provenance, ownership, editorial history, literary analysis, and an assessment of the manuscript in its wider cultural context. Manuscript transcriptions are appended, particularly since the contents of two out of three of the miscellanies discussed here have never been printed. Chapter One, by way of introduction, considers the current state of manuscript research in Scotland, and the implications for Scottish studies of book-historical methodologies. ‘Histories of the Book’ are currently being written across Europe (and further afield), and Scotland forms no exception. Against this backdrop, Chapter One evaluates recent critical work on early modern Scottish textual culture, and the extent to which book-historical narratives, developed in relation to medieval and renaissance English literature, can be applied to Scottish writing. More specifically, this chapter locates the miscellany manuscript as a prime site of investigation for scribal culture. The first miscellany under investigation, in Chapter Two, is Edinburgh University Library MS Laing III.447. For the largest part, the content of this manuscript has been printed, as a supplementary volume to the works of Alexander Montgomerie. This print is problematic in many respects, however, since it reorganised the entire content, and removed from its immediate context the longest poem of the manuscript, Montgomerie’s The Cherrie and the Slae. The appended transcription restores the original order. Chapter Two will investigate the contributions of the many scribes that were responsible for the manuscript, and examine whether any thematic coherence may be detected. Chapter Three deals with Cambridge University Library MS Kk.5.30, a hybrid manuscript that contains two sections. Section one (dating to the late-fifteenth, early-sixteenth century) features a transcription of John Lydgate’s Middle English Troy Book; section two consists of a later supply (c. 1612) by James Murray of Tibbermuir, containing additions to the Troy Book and twenty-seven miscellaneous poems. Though this latter section will be the main focus of the chapter, the manuscript’s other section, and thus its hybridity, will not be ignored. The third and final miscellany to be discussed is National Library of Scotland MS 15937. Containing approximately 175 items (many of which from English sources), this is the most expansive of the three manuscripts considered here. MS 15937 is textually a problematic source, since it is a nineteenth-century transcript of a lost original, the latter compiled by Margaret Robertson of Lude around 1630. This miscellany is an important witness also in musical terms, since it collects the words to a significant amount of Scottish and English songs, many of them unique to the manuscript. All chapters will stress the highly idiosyncratic nature of the miscellanies, but also, where possible, establish common ground between them, and connect them to other Scottish and English manuscripts and printed books. In all their complexity, the miscellanies reveal a literary culture whose nature undermines the monolithic and court-centred history that has been so prevalent in literary criticism (though the court, and courtly writing, are important backgrounds to a great deal of the poetry contained in the manuscripts). Finally, as underlined in the concluding Chapter Five, EUL Laing III.447, CUL MS Kk.5.30, and NLS MS 15937 are important collections both for the preservation, and for evidence about the dissemination, of Scottish and English verse. ii list of contents ~ abstract ............................................................................................ i list of contents ............................................................................................ ii acknowledgements ............................................................................................ iv note on transcriptions ............................................................................................ v abbreviations ............................................................................................ vi chapter one Introduction: The Production and Circulation of Literary Miscellany Manuscripts in Jacobean Scotland, c. 1580-c. 1630 1 The Study of Scottish Literary Manuscripts.................. 5 The Manuscripts – EUL MS Laing III.447; CUL MS Kk.5.30; NLS MS 15937............................... 10 New Histories of the Book............................................ 16 New Histories of the Scottish Book.............................. 19 Literary Circles, the Court, and the Canon.................... 22 A ‘Degree of Adventurousness’.................................... 26 chapter two ‘Johne Nesbet vith my hand’: Edinburgh University Library MS Laing III.447 28 Editorial History of MS Laing III.447........................... 30 Manuscript Content....................................................... 31 Ownership and the Cultural Context............................. 37 The Poems, ff. 4r-14r..................................................... 44 ‘Off the cherry and the Slae’, ff. 15r-31v...................... 54 The Poems, ff. 32r-45r.................................................. 58 The Poems, ff. 69r-83v.................................................. 70 Conclusion..................................................................... 82 chapter three ‘James Murray with my hand in all hest’: Cambridge University Library MS Kk.5.30 87 Editorial History of CUL MS Kk.5.30.......................... 89 Ownership and the Cultural Context............................. 91 Manuscript Content of Section Two............................. 96 The Book List, f. 2r....................................................... 101 History, Romance, and Song, ff. 1r, 11r-v.................... 103 The ‘Dyers’, ff. 5r-7r..................................................... 106 Three Sonnets, ff. 71v-72r............................................. 111 Three Songs, ff. 75r-v, 81v, 82v.................................... 116 Two Sonnets, ff. 75v-76r............................................... 118 Ten Sonnets, ff. 77r-78v................................................ 122 Alexander Hume and ‘Cupid quhom sall I vyt bot the’, ff. 79r-80v............................................................. 133 Conclusion..................................................................... 137 iii chapter four ‘Margaret Robertson with my hand’: National Library of Scotland MS 15937 140 History and Description of MS 15937.......................... 141 The Robertsons of Lude................................................ 146 Manuscript Content....................................................... 149 The English Songs and Poems...................................... 152 Scottish Poems and Songs in Other Sources ................ 159 The Sonnets, ff. 2-16..................................................... 168 The Dyers, ff. 18-28...................................................... 174 Pastoral lyrics, ff. 28-36................................................ 179 Widening the Range, ff. 74-84, 110-16, 135-38........... 182 Bawdy Verse, ff. 144-68, 173-76.................................. 186 Concluding the Manuscript, ff. 212-15......................... 191 Conclusion..................................................................... 198 chapter five Conclusion: The Miscellany and the ‘Whole Book’ 201 The ‘Whole Book’......................................................... 202 Textual Spaces............................................................... 204 Scottish Manuscript Studies and the Future.................. 207 appendix one Manuscript Images 209 appendix two Transcription of EUL Laing III.447 224 appendix three Transcription of Section Two of CUL MS Kk.5.30 262 appendix four Transcription and tables of NLS MS 15937 283 Table 1: Contents of NLS MS 15937............................ 283 Table 2: Contents of BL MS 24904............................... 289 Table 3: Index of English Song Books.........................