I should add that if anyone is interested in the connections between
sonnets and the Inns of court, Giles Fletcher's dedicatory epistle to Licia
points to "the Innes of Court, and some Gentlemen like students in both
Universities, whose learning and bringing up together, with their fine
natures makes so sweet a harmonie" that "they onelie are fittest to write of
Love." What exactly that means seems to me a complicated problem
though, raising more questions than it answers. But Stawell has company.
cw
---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:59:41 -0500
>From: Martin Leigh Harrison <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: "New" Elizabethan sonnets
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
> All:
>
> I've come across an interesting article by a certain
> Guillaume Coatalen of the University of Paris III
> (Sorbonne Nouvelle) titled "Unpublished Elizabethan
> Sonnets in a Legal Manuscript from the Cambridge
> University Library" (The Review of English Studies
> n.s. vol. 54 no. 217--very recent), and I thought
> I'd bring it to your attention. Readers of the
> article also have the opportunity to test their
> palaeographical skills, as it contains one
> photograph of a manuscript leaf (Cambridge MS Hh
> 3.8, fo. 145 v).
>
> Here's the abstract:
>
> ***
> "This article has its starting point in a late
> Elizabethan legal manuscript compiled, probably in
> the 1580s, by Ralph Stawell, a gentleman and lawyer
> from the Middle Temple. Two folios of the manuscript
> contain ten unpublished Petrarchan sonnets and seven
> couplets embedded in Middle Temple notes: as well as
> reproducing the manuscript poems the article also
> prints these with annotation. It thus presents a new
> esample, sharply contextualized by its manuscript
> setting, of the typical conjunction of law and
> poetry in the period and confirms that literary
> material of more than average merit may be found
> among its legal papers. It also offers an unusual
> case of mise-en-page of late Elizabethan sonnets in
> manuscript and adds significant new material to a
> poetic genre in full vogue at the time, the
> Petrarchan sonnet."
>
> ***
>
> And here's sonnet 5 (of 10), the last 4 lines of
> which I like:
>
> ---
>
> Deare what doth hee deserve that loves yow soe
> at least some little favor he deserves
> which yow in Iustice and in kindnes owe
> to him which with so true devocion serves
> But knowe yow this that hee contentes him not
> with a sweet glove or ann enameled Ringe
> A fether of a fanne a trulove knot
> A Sipres scarfe or sutch a light vaine thing
> for as for sutch tokens of love as these
> children & fooles perhaps they maye content
> but that which highe aspiringe thoughtes will plese
> is farr more rare & farr more excelent
> And yet with leser cost may granted be
> for it is nought but oportunitie
>
> ---
>
> I'll admit that I'm unfamiliar with some of the
> analogues that Coatalen presents for Stawell's
> poems, so I'll just have to find them and acquaint
> myself. But this leads me to a question I hope you
> can answer: just how many "known" sonneteers can we
> list from the 16th c.? and, speaking of canon
> formation, do any of you know of any particular
> sonneteers from that period who have had trouble
> achieving the kind of reputation you think they
> deserve? (Is it possible to speak of an
> "extracanonical canon" of early modern sonnet
> sequences, or should we rest content with our
> volumes of Wyatt, Surrey, Sidney, Spenser,
> Shakespeare, Milton, Wroth, &c.?)
>
> Leigh Harrison
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