This is one of the many things I find fascinating about English printed
sonnet sequences of the 1590s and after. One could argue that James
Roberts, printer of Delia, Diella, Diana, and non-alliteratively
Phillis, was as influential in creating the image of what a sonnet
sequence should look like as any sonneteer. After all, for how many of
these sequences do we possess holograph manuscripts? All the evidence I
can think of (Daniel, Drayton, Greville, Robert Sidney) tends to suggest
that English poets seem not to write sonnet *sequences*, with a
teleological narrative in view, but sonnet *series*, revising their old
sonnets, changing the order around, writing other kinds of lyrics on
similar subjects. I do think there is something peculiarly addictive for
a writer about organising their thoughts into fourteen lines of rhymed
(usually) iambic pentameter. It so happens that at certain moments one
particular order of these series is captured in print, or in a
particular manuscript, and this order then achieves a certain authority
through circulation, but I am very wary of ascribing to the authors the
kind of concern with the structure of their sequences that one finds in,
for instance, Spenser's letter to Ralegh about the Faerie Queene.

The Amoretti, as published, are of course an exception to this. But then
the final book does look different to the usual 1590s sonnet sequences,
even in format if I recall correctly. I have more problems with the 1609
Shakespeare sonnets: I remember poring over the copy in the Bodleian
library, trying to work out if I thought it looked different to other
sequences simply because I had to jump through so many administrative
hoops to look at it, or if there really was a perceivable difference in
the presentation of the poems on the page. I think there is but have
never been able to articulate it properly.

Oh, on the Psalms: could any English writer in early modern England
produce a lyric sequence *without* having David lurking somewhere in his
or her consciousness?

Helen

Helen Vincent
Senior Curator
Rare Book Collections

Tel: +44 (0) 131 623 3894
Fax: +44 (0) 131 623 3888
Email: [log in to unmask]

National Library of Scotland     
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Edinburgh                             
EH1 1EW
Scotland
  

 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Marshall Grossman
> Sent: 07 June 2007 17:16
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Amoretti and Sonnets
> 
> A literary historical point could be made: although we are 
> unlikely to know definitively what Shakespeare's role was in 
> putting the sonnets into the shape they now have, we do know 
> that Thorpe's 1609 quarto is the book that entered literary 
> history and has, for all these years, been assimilated by it. 
>  With that I venture a formal argument that Q is a very good 
> book, that the poems are clearly ordered in a way that yields 
> narrative, that "The Lover's Complaint" makes good sense 
> where it is (as Duncan-Jones and others have argued) and that 
> the sonnets--as we might read them in Q--track very nicely 
> with preoccupations we find in the plays (e. g. 20 and 
> Twelfth Night, 94 and Measure for Measure, 138 and just about 
> every everything he ever writ.)  So, even, if we were to add, 
> "as compiled by J. Thorpe" to the author line, we'd still have a book.
> 
> Marshall Grossman
> Professor
> Department of English
> University of Maryland
> College Park, MD 20895
> 
> 301-405-9651
> [log in to unmask]
> 

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