The Authorship of 'Luminalia,' with Notes on Some Other Poems of Sir William D'Avenant Author(s): Edith S. Hooper Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Oct., 1913), pp. 540-543 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3712600 Accessed: 14-01-2016 19:28 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Modern Humanities Research Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Modern Language Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Thu, 14 Jan 2016 19:28:38 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 540 Miscellaneous Notes ascribes the Craft of Lovers to Chaucer, but nothing else. Stow made use of some blank leaves near the end (fols. 236-7) to write in two of Lydgate's fables. They are subscribed 'Finis Iohn Lydgat wryten by Iohn Stow.' The text of these is in his usual hand, the headings in the larger and more sprawling one. Most of the text of the volume is written in a good hand of the end of the fifteenth century. But fols. 49-53 are in a more current hand. This, however, I believe to be the current hand of the same scribe. Further, fols. 218-252 are in a quite different hand, which Prof. Skeat thought 'considerably later than 1500' (Chaucer, VII, lxxiv). But I would call attention to the facts that these last sections are foliated (separately) in the same hand as the rest of the volume, that this hand is pretty certainly fifteenth century, and that the sections were demon- strably not bound in blank. It follows that the contents were written before 1500, and I see nothing in the hand itself to make this unlikely. If I am right, therefore, the Court of Love cannot belong to the circle of poets represented by Tottel's Miscellany as Skeat suggested. The main scribe of the volume is also the main scribe of R. 3. 21, and one of the other hands of R. 3. 21 is said to occur in MSS. Harley 2251 and Addit. 34360 at the British Museum (Anglia, xxvIII, 10). Neither is that of John Shirley, but all these MSS. evidently came from a scriptorium where at least one Shirley MS. was in use. W. W. GREG. CAMBRIDGE. THE AUTHORSHIP OF 'LUMINALIA,' WITH NOTES ON SOME OTHER POEMS OF SIR WILLIAM D'AVENANT. 'Luminalia j or I the Festivall of Light . Personated in a masque j at Court I By the Queenes Majestie I and her Ladies I On Shrovetuesday Night 1637. | London. | Printed by John Haviland for Thomas Walkley, and I are to be sold at his shop at the flying Horse neere I Yorke House, 1637 i.' This is the title of the anonymous masque which has been attri- buted to Ben Jonson (in a pencil note, corrected, on the title-page of one of the British Museum copies); to Robert Greene and Thomas Lodge by Phillips in his Theatrum Poetarum (1675), an ascription concerning which Grosart, who reprinted the masque (Miscellanies of the Ftuller Worthies Library, Vol. 4), remarks that everyone must agree with Dyce that it is most improbable; and finally by R. Brotanek in 'Ein unerkanntes This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Thu, 14 Jan 2016 19:28:38 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Miscellaneous Notes 541 Werk Sir William Davenants' (Anglia, Beiblatt, xi, pp. 177-181) and Die englischen Maskenspiele (p. 364), to D'Avenant. Brotanek's assign- ment rests on resemblances in style between Luminalia and Britannia Triumphans the King's masque composed for Twelfth Night 1637, of which D'Avenant's authorship was acknowledged; and derives additional support from the probability that the composition of the Queen's masque would also be intrusted to the poet then succeeding, as he had previously supplanted, Ben Jonson in the framing of these exquisite and costly literary ephemera. The following extract from the Stationers' Hall Register establishes Brotanek's conjecture: 6 March 1657 (i.e. 165i) Mr Hum: Moseley. Entred for his Copie by vertue of an Assignment under the hand and seale of Thomas Walkley All his Estate right & tytle in the severall Bookes following vizt The Temple of Love a masque at Whitehall on Shrove Tuesday 1634. Brittania Triumphans a masque at Whitehall at Twelth night 1637. Luminalia or the ffestivall Light a masque at Court on Shrove Tuesday night 1637. Salmatida Spolia a masque at Whitehall on Tuesday the 21th of Ianuary 1639. all written by Sr Willm Davenant. To wch Assignmt the hand of Mr Thomason warden is Subscribed. vi d. The music of Luminalia was said, by Rimbault, to have been printed in the quarto. Reyher (Les Masques Anglais) remarks that it is not so found in the three British Museum examples; and it is not bound up with the Bodleian copy which I have seen. Rimbault also gives N. Laniere as the composer ('Hist. Introduction to the opera of Banduca'); but probably he therein followed Stafford Smith (Musica Antiqua, I, p. 60) who by some unlucky confusion has given the words and music of a song in one of Campion's masques (1614) as belonging to Luminalia. Completely 'unknown to bibliographers' is another work of D'Avenant's, entered at the Stationers' Hall in the preceding year. 7 December 1657 Mr Henry Herringman. Entred for his Copie (under the hand of Mr Thomason warden) a booke called Severall Poems upon severall occa- sions. To wch is added A Poem to my Lord Broghill. Epithalamium upon the Marriage of the Lady Mary Daughter to his Highness wth the Lord Viscount ffalcon- bridge to bee sung in Recitative Musick. An Essay for the New Theatre representing the Preparaconof the Athenians for the Reception of Phocion after hee had gained a victory. all written by Sr William Davenant. vi d. This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Thu, 14 Jan 2016 19:28:38 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 542 Miscellaneous Notes There is considerable interest in this edition of poems. Even if the body of the collection possibly consisted of work which previously appeared in Madagascar and other poems (1638 and 1648), two, certainly, of the three particularised are poems hitherto unknown. 'My Lord Broghill' is Roger Boyle, first Earl of Orrery, 'the Credit of the Irish nobility for wit and ingenuous parts and a smooth stile both in Prose and Verse,' as Edward Phillips writes. A lengthy address in heroic couplets is inscribed to him in Herringman's posthumous edition of D'Avenant's works. It occurs among 'Poems...never before printed,' but nevertheless may be substantially a reprint of the 1657 poem. There was no reason against its reappearance, such as may have occasioned the suppression of the two others. The Epithalamium upon the marriage of Cromwell's daughter Mary is another testimony to the favour enjoyed by D'Avenant under the Protectorate, when also, in Sir Henry Herbert's angry words, 'he obtained leave from Oliver and Richard to vent his operas.' The 'essay for the New Theatre,' repre- senting the reception of Phocion after an Athenian victory, may be plausibly conjectured to have been intended to celebrate Blake's victory at Santa Cruz on April 20, 1657, the same year, possibly for perform- ance on the day (June 3) of public rejoicing, or after his return, had he lived. The 'New Theatre' may intend a reference to the Cockpit, whither D'Avenant's 'public entertainments by moral representations' were transferred from Rutland House; or may resemble a rhetorical flourish on the title-page of Flecknoe's Love's Dominion which, he claims, is written for a new reformed theatre for which he implores the favour of Cromwell's daughter, Mrs Claypole. 'The accessible catalogues of most of the important public and private collections have been examined for an entry of these 'Severall Poems,' but without result. It is, as has been remarked, unnoted by biblio- graphers. Possibly, therefore, this entry in the Stationers' Register may afford another instance of books entered but not published, so far as known. Anthony k Wood (Ath. Oxon., III, 808, ed. Bliss) names in his list of D'Avenant's writings, 'Poems on Severall Occasions,' but unfortunately gives no date to establish that he is not referring to the 1672 collection 'never before printed' which forms part of Herringman's folio. Moreover, in his list the preceding and following entries are dated 1669 and 1676 respectively, from which circumstance it is to be feared that he does not intend the 'Severall Poems' of 1657. It is curious that Masson appears to have known of the Epithalamium (Life of Milton, Vol. vi, p. 274 note, ed. 1880); but he may equally have This content downloaded from 178.250.250.21 on Thu, 14 Jan 2016 19:28:38 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Miscellaneous Notes 543 observed the entry in the Stationers' Hall Register. At any rate, he gives no clue to the existence of a copy.