Elizabethan Poetry: A Bibliography and First-Line Index of English Verse, (review)

Transcription

1 Elizabethan Poetry: A Bibliography and First-Line Index of English Verse, (review) Peter Beal The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, Volume 7, Number 1, March 2006, pp (Review) Published by Oxford University Press For additional information about this article Accessed 11 Apr :30 GMT

2 94 Reviews from the late 1460s Schoeffer had a pivotal role in the trade in printed books through his connections with printers in Venice, Basel, Nuremberg, and other major centres. After a decade of great productivity as printer as well as bookdealer, he shifted his business interests almost entirely to the retail trade. Acting as an entrepôt, or one might say as a refiner, for books printed elsewhere, his business organized their illumination and binding in Mainz by craftmen and artists who were associated with him, then to be sold on by him for the German market and far beyond. Instead of an exhibition catalogue, the Gutenberg Museum has published Cornelia Schneider s study as a permanent memorial of the occasion. In her book she takes full account of the development of Schoeffer s business, and illustrates it with details of the illuminations from which the central organization behind the work of the artists can be inferred. But she begins with a brief yet spectacular new contribution to Schoeffer studies, an interpretation of the well-known device of two shields hanging from a branch (the earliest printer s device), the model and inspiration of countless other devices, which has also been the subject of an untold number of more or less fanciful interpretations. The original version of the device was used from 1462 (its occurrence in a single copy of the 1457 Psalter may be a later additon) and traditionally scholars have allocated one shield to Fust and the other to Schoeffer. Schneider points out, however, that in the period a set of shields would designate a single individual, when not a noble. The large symbols on the two shields in the device she deciphers convincingly as the Greek letters Chi, for Christ, and Lambda, for Logos, the three stars set around the lambda symbolizing the Trinity. Together the symbols refer to the opening words of the Gospel of St John. The symbolism would have been particularly suitable for Peter Schoeffer, who was a cleric devoting his life to the materialization and dissemination of the word of God in the medium of print. Schneider argues that during Fust and Schoeffer s partnership the device would have stood for publications in which Schoeffer had a financial stake, and speculates whether the few publications without a colophon and device might have been financed by Johann Fust alone. The exhibition at the Bridwell Library of forty-two items of Schoeffer editions and related material, mainly from its own collection, is focused on Schoeffer as printer and publisher. It was accompanied by a catalogue with workmanlike descriptions of the exhibited items, and excellent illustrations, which do full justice to the splendour of Schoeffer s large folio editions. London Lotte Hellinga Elizabethan Poetry: A Bibliography and First-Line Index of English Verse, By Steven W. May and William A. Ringler, Jr. 3 vols. London and New York: Thoemmes Continuum xx + viii + viii pp isbn Among those interested in the scope and textual history of early modern English poetry, these volumes have been long and eagerly awaited. The cherished project of the late William A. Ringler, Jr, to index all English verse from 1476 to 1603 surviving in either printed or manuscript form has now been brought to completion by his heirs and successors. Before his death on 1 January 1987 Ringler delivered the

3 The Library, 7.7.1, March completed typescript of his Bibliography and Index of English Verse: Printed , which was published by Mansell in His extensive papers provided the foundation for the Bibliography and Index of English Verse in Manuscript, , prepared and completed by Michael Ruddick and Susan J. Ringler, which Mansell published in Now after some twelve years of work by Steven May, based partly on what Ringler recorded and to a very great extent on May s own research and discoveries, with occasional help from assistants, we have the grandest monument of all: some 32,588 entries packed on to 1,824 pages in double columns recording verse of the Elizabethan period surviving in both printed and manuscript form. It is as well, however, to be aware of May s parameters here. This is not a record of all English verse actually composed in the reign of Elizabeth. The entries are determined by the dates, or approximate dates, of the artefacts in which verse appears. Thus May has trawled through as many books as possible printed between 1559 and 1603 to record any verse they contain. Similarly, in nearly a hundred locations in the British Isles and America he has examined hundreds of manuscripts, including commonplace books, notebooks, and miscellanies, compiled within that period, so far as they can be dated with any accuracy, also to record any verse they contain (affecting some 1,200 entries). What he has not done plainly because it would be a supplementary task of immeasurable proportions is record all other instances of Elizabethan verse that were printed or copied out after This is worth bearing in mind, because many of the best-known poems associated with the traditional golden age of Elizabethan literature do not survive in any texts earlier than 1604 including various works by the likes of John Donne, Sir Walter Ralegh, Sir John Davies, and Sir John Harington, not to mention the sugred Sonnets of Shakespeare that were in manuscript circulation at least as early as We must therefore not be surprised if these volumes, extensive as they are, are not as comprehensive as might originally have been expected. This fact alone, however, throws interesting light on the corpus of Elizabethan verse. It reminds us, for one thing, of how much we are beholden to the subsequent nostalgia for Elizabethan culture that set in during the later years of James I s reign and persisted to some extent up to the Civil War. But for this nostalgia, many Elizabethan texts for which there are no surviving contemporary examples would not have been copied in the 1620s and 1630s and would therefore no longer exist. At the same time, it reminds us how precarious is the survival of literary texts for the Tudor period, especially those circulated only in manuscript. For all the thousands of poems that do survive, how many more were lost including collections of verse known to have been made, for instance, by Ralegh and the witty young lawyer John Hoskins? On the other hand, it is of considerable interest, if not surprise, to see how many entries in this Index relate to medieval texts. Not only do Elizabethan manuscript transcripts or printings of much earlier texts make an important contribution to the very survival of those works, but they are another reminder of the influence that medieval and early Tudor literature continued to exert throughout the sixteenth century. Granted May s brief, the guides he provides for the use of this Index are extraordinarily helpful. After eighteen pages of preliminaries explaining the project s history and his methodology and coverage, May devotes the first 199 pages to a

4 96 Reviews listing of printed documents of containing English verse and of manuscripts with verse transcribed in this period. The printed documents are arranged according to STC numbers, the manuscripts in alphabetical order by repository according to a standard system of abbreviations: thus, C = Cambridge University Library, F = the Folger Shakespeare Library, BISH = Church of All Saints, Bisham, and so on, with cross-references to all relevant entries in each case. At the opposite end, from page 2029 onwards, we have a series of alphabetical indexes to the main entries, recording all the poets represented; fictional names and topics (such as Hero and Leander or Judgment of Paris ); historical persons and events ( Agincourt, Battle of, Drake, Sir Francis, etc.); illustrations (listing various types of allegory, animals, etc., for verses accompanying woodcuts or other illustrations); literary kinds or genres (such as acrostic, listed by names represented, and Prophecy, with select sub-headings such as Spanish Armada ); poems set to music; rhyme schemes and verse forms (alliterative, blank verse, etc., with separate listings of burdens and refrains); a lengthy series of subjects (agriculture, astronomy, medicine, etc.); subscriptions (such as the intriguing A Comb and a Louse, or A Tennis Ball ); titles; and finally translations, including adaptations, dialects, and paraphrases. Is there anything, I wonder, that May has missed here? These aids allow for access to the range and nature of this huge body of verse, and to an analytical overview of it, which is quite unprecedented. The entries themselves for the First-Line Index are listed alphabetically, each poem given a sequential reference number prefaced by the abbreviation for English Verse, EV. The first line in each case is followed by references to the poem s STC or manuscript sources, with date, author (if known), title or heading, rhyme scheme, number of lines, and other aspects of the poem recorded in the various indexes, such as genre and subject matter. This information necessarily appears in abbreviated form, for which the reader may occasionally be obliged to consult the lists of abbreviations, bibliography, and other explanatory matter in the preliminaries. As with all reference works, however, including not least the Brown and Robbins Index of Middle English Verse and the STC, whose procedures partly served as Ringler s models, one soon gets used to the format, and the volumes gradually unfold to yield readily their manifold treasures. Spot checks on those poems and sources with which I am already familiar indicate, as one would expect, an extremely high level of accuracy in the information recorded in these entries. If errors there be, they will only come to light in the fullness of time as more and more scholars consult this ample resource themselves. And the same anticipation may also apply to the different uses that different literary scholars and historians may be able to make of this catalogue, given the huge range of subjects it covers. It is no empty boast that, as May notes, Ringler s indexing methodology makes possible significant interdisciplinary research. It is to May s credit, besides, that he has defined as clearly as possible the limits of his own research. Thus, besides his explaining matters of definition (of what constitutes a poem ), dating, and coverage in his introduction, he provides, as an appendix on the very last page, a list of 472 STC references for those printed books of the period that he has not been able to see. If we had had to wait for those books also to be checked, this huge project might never have been finished, and it is perfectly acceptable for a line to be drawn, so we know where we stand. No

5 The Library, 7.7.1, March catalogue of this nature will ever be fully comprehensive additions are bound to turn up from time to time but this is about as complete as it is reasonable to expect until funding and sheer will-power implement someone s search of those remaining volumes. For that matter, wouldn t it be splendid if a superhuman team could be assembled to catalogue the next chronological stage: that equally golden era of verse production, so much of it in manuscript form, from 1604 to 1640? But this fancifully wishful thinking also touches on one aspect of the present volumes that cannot escape notice. In the era of electronic databases and the internet, with all their search facilities and manifest advantages for any type of reference work, why has this catalogue been confined to print format? I assume that the answer lies in the long history of the project, dating back to Ringler s work well before the internet era, as well as in long-standing publishing contracts. Perhaps one day it will all be digitized. In the meantime, Elizabethan Poetry must surely be the last prodigious monument to bibliographical scholarship of this kind ever to appear as purely printed text. London Peter Beal Reading Material in Early Modern England: Printer, Gender, and Literacy. By Heidi Brayman Hackel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press xii pp. 45. isbn The richest part of Heidi Brayman Hackel s rewarding book comes at its close: her transcription of the 1627 catalogue of the Countess of Bridgewater s London library. As Frances Bridgewater s collection was one that any reader or collector today might envy, so is Hackel s labour of identification and classification something for which to be grateful. Large as the Countess s London library was, the greater part of it still survives today and is given local habitation by the catalogue in the Huntington Library and elsewhere. Yet it is chiefly as the object of envy that it fascinates. Imagine having owned a volume of Diuers Playes by Shakespeare or Diuerse Playes in 5 thicke Volumes and not having needed to specify what it was that you had on your shelf in any greater detail; imagine, too, being able to reach down a copy of Mary Wroth s The Countesse of Montgomeries Urania (1621), Jonson s Workes (1616), or a Fayery Queene (1609) from among your folios. Hackel has, in fact, gone some way to imagining this, and with the cooperation of the Huntington s staff has assembled equivalents to the 241 books in the catalogue on close to thirty feet of modern shelf space (the resulting image is Fig. 10 in her book, a detail from which is used on the dust jacket). But what might one woman s private library tell us about the broader questions opened out by Hackel s work? How can the evidence of book ownership, or in greater detail book annotation, build towards an accurate picture of early modern reading habits? Reading Material in Early Modern England, Hackel writes, is an attempt to delineate the asymmetries of early modern English literacies and reading habits ; it takes at its centre marginalia, annotation, commonplace books, and the evidence of book ownership such as Frances Bridgewater s catalogue as the historical, material traces of multiple readers at single moments in their reading lives and looks to set them against the fiction perpetrated elsewhere of the singular ideal reader ungrounded in place or time (p. 257).