Perhaps an Elizabethan publicity stunt, Dave, but here's one of the sources
in which I read about Sidney's horseback-writing. [Bear with the language;
it does eventually reveal the then-contemporary hearsay]:
In this tract is ye Earle of Pembroke's noble seat at Wilton; but the
Arcadia and the Daphne is about Vernditch and Wilton; and these romancy
plaines and boscages did no doubt conduce to the hightening of Sir Philip
Sydney's phansie. He lived much in these parts, and his most masterly
touches of his pastoralls he wrote here upon the spott, where they were
conceived. 'Twas about these purlieus that the muses were wont to appeare to
Sir Philip Sydney, and where he wrote down their dictates in his table book,
though on horseback.*
*I remember some old relations of mine and [other] old men hereabout that
have seen Sir Philip doe thus.
†[Aubrey held the manor farm of Broad Chalk under a lease from the Earl of
Pembroke. - J. B.]
2008/8/25 David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
> Candice
>
> would Sir Pip actually known about Beowulf.? Chaucer, Gower, yes, but
> that? To me, the whole thing smells of Elizabethan publicity stunt
>
> PR began a long time ago.
>
>
> 2008/8/26 MC Ward <[log in to unmask]>:
> > I wonder if Sydney et al. weren't parodying the Beowulf sequence where
> the scribe composes on horseback as Hrothgar and Beowulf go in search of
> Grendel's mother. I say "composes" because that term allows for both
> unlettered and literate poets. This one is composing in his head as he rides
> along on his honorific horse, knowing that whatever way the match goes he
> need only to follow and do some rearranging of the action at the end of the
> day.
> >
> > Candice
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> David Bircumshaw
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
|