I don't disagree--although I do like editions that give one choices, even
perplexities. Luckily with Shakespeare we have a range. And then there's
EEBO, even though that, as has been said--and by Spenserians--isn't all
that solid. That is why I'm happy, even if it does seem a bit
intellectually wimpish, to have "The Dolefull Lay" in both Spenser's
shorter poems ed. Oram and Mary Sidney's poems ec. Hannay et al. But
Colin's warning certainly makes sense. Anne.
> A brief PS: there are a couple of things on this (possibly more than this,
> but these are what fall to hand): A. Kent Hieatt, T. G. Bishop, E. A.
> Nicholson, 'Shakespeare's Rare Words: "Lover's Complaint", Cymbeline, and
> Sonnets', NQ 232 (1987), 219-24; MacD. P. Jackson, 'Echoes of Spenser's
> Prothalamion as evidence against an Early Date for Shakespeare's A Lover's
> Complaint', NQ 235 (1990), 180-2.
>
>
>
> I'm also on the whole happier to make a fetish of a book than an author.
> But
> they might be two perversions which are most healthily indulged together,
> in
> a mildly antithetical relationship. That is, if you find yourself thinking
> that the 1609 volume physically is a book which looks like and follows the
> shape of Daniel's Delia and resembles the Amoretti and so on; and if you
> go
> on to think well then why not read it like that, as a kind of
> bibliographical testament to the Delian/Spenserian sequence, then I think
> you're in danger of neglecting the sheer messiness of the world. (Sorry,
> Anne; I don't mean you by those pronouns). Which is why it might be quite
> a
> good thing to wonder who might have made it like that, and to wonder
> whether
> Shakespeare went back to Spenser at around the same time he was
> experimenting with dramatising Lodge and Greene's prose; and that might
> lead
> you to think, well if he didn't write A Lover's Complaint, should we be
> quite so spellbound by the engagingly material presence of the poem in the
> book? Isn't that a way of cutting short rather than solving a problem? I
> suppose I like it best when my fetishes fight and create perplexity (don't
> tell my wife; she thinks I'm quite normal).
>
>
>
> Colin Burrow
>
> Senior Research Fellow
>
> All Souls College
>
> High Street
>
> Oxford OX1 4AL
>
> 01865 279341 (direct) 01865 279379 (Lodge)
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
> _____
>
> From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of anne prescott
> Sent: 07 June 2007 16:03
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Amoretti and Sonnets
>
>
>
> I'm swamped by SCSC business at the moment and don't have time to check
> this, but I recall something by Kent Hieatt on verbal overlaps between the
> Lover's Complaint and Sonnets? In any case, two quick thoughts: first,
> questions of authorship aside, for those of us interested in the material
> history of the book (and with at least a touch of the postmodern
> skepticism
> about capital A authorship) it's interesting to see 1609 *Sonnets* follow
> the pattern you find in Lodge, Spenser, Fletcher, Daniel and others in
> which
> you get a sonnet sequence, often something fluffy--anacreontics, final
> sonnets about Cupid, whatever--and then a long poem. It's for that reason
> that I prefer editions that include the Complaint. If I were any more
> postmodern I'd say something about fetishizing authorship, but that
> wouldn't
> be, um, me.
>
> Second, and back to Spenser and sensuality, I do recommend Roger
> Kuin's
> book *Chamber Music* in this regard--unusual in form, even to the point of
> including "Will" as a character in one chapter, but/and wise on the matter
> of desire and sonnets. Anne P.
>
>
>
> On Jun 6, 2007, at 6:56 PM, Colin Burrow wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> Well yes and no. There's also a growing body of work which suggests that
> Katherine Duncan-Jones may present rather too positive a view of Thorpe's
> career, and that the 1609 volume gives off a variety of bibliographical
> cues, not all of which suggest that it was 'authorized'. And if one gave
> credence to Brian Vickers's Shakespeare, 'A Lover's Complaint', and John
> Davies of Hereford(Cambridge, 2007) then one might end up wondering how
> that
> strange and strangely Spenserian (off topic, me?) poem came to be printed
> along with the Sonnets. The RSC editors take his arguments seriously
> enough
> to leave A Lover's Complaint out of their printed volume. Where does that
> leave our sense of the 1609 volume, or for that matter the relationship
> between Spenser and Shakespeare, I wonder?
>
>
>
>
>
> Colin Burrow
>
> Senior Research Fellow
>
> All Souls College
>
> High Street
>
> Oxford OX1 4AL
>
> 01865 279341 (direct) 01865 279379 (Lodge)
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
> _____
>
> From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of Peter C. Herman
> Sent: 06 June 2007 17:35
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Amoretti and Sonnets
>
>
>
> since we have no knowledge of how far Shakespeare planned or approved the
> form in which his poems found their way into print.
>
>
> This oint was mentioned earlier, but given Charlie's statement above, I
> thought it might bear repeating: there's now a substantial body of
> scholarship arguing that Shakespeare was much more involved with the
> publication of the Sonnets than previously assumed, and there is a
> corollary
> point: that Shakespeare wrote, or revised, the Sonnets close to their
> publication, and not earlier in his career. See, for example, these two
> articles:
>
> Duncan-Jones, Katherine. "Was the 1609 Shake-Speares Sonnets Really
> Unauthorized?"
> Review of English Studies n.s. 34 (1983): 151-71.
>
> Hieatt, A. Kent, Charles W. Hieatt, and Anne Lake Prescott." "When did
> Shakespeare
> Write Sonnets 1609?" Studies in Philology 88 (1991): 69-109.
>
> For the Sonnets generally, see also James Schiffer's 2000 anthology,
> Shakespeare's Sonnets: Critical Essays.
>
> pch
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> At level of the sequence, the appearance of realism may therefore be
> partly
> accidental - with the messiness (for want of a better word) of real
> subjective experience being 'imitated' not through any authorial intention
> but rather as a consequence of the real-word messiness of the
> circumstances
> of publication.
>
> Charlie
>
> --
> Website: <http://www.charlesbutler.co.uk> www.charlesbutler.co.uk
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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