_Wittenberg University
Springfield, Ohio
December, 1965_
Footnotes:
[1] See in this connection my article "The Elizabethan Minor Epic,"
=SP=, LV (1958), 31-38, answered by Walter Allen, Jr., pp. 515-518. My
chief concern in this article was to show that the kind of poetry
described therein, though in years past loosely and variously referred
to by such terms as "Ovidian poetry" or "mythological love poetry,"
and often lumped together indiscriminately with other kinds such as
the complaint, the tragical history, and the verse romance, actually
constitutes a distinct genre recognized in practice by Renaissance
poets. Whether or not there is classical authority for use of the term
"epyllion," though a significant point of scholarship, is not the main
issue here. Either the term "minor epic" or "epyllion" is
satisfactory, provided its referent is clear, and accurately
described.
[2] Published with I. C's [John Chalkhill's?] =Alcilia, Philoparthens
Loving Folly. Whereunto is Added Pigmalion's Image ... and Also
Epigrammes by Sir I. H.= [John Harington] =and Others=, STC 4275.
[3] =Bibliographical Collections and Notes, 1893-1903= (London, 1903;
reprinted 1961 by Burt Franklin), p. 301.
[4] Or Linche's.
[5] Actually Grosart edited the second impression of =The Scourge=, STC
969 (1614), the earliest impression he knew at the time, though by
1883 he had become aware of the unique Huth copy of the 1613 edition.
(See pp. 49-50 issued with copy no. 38 of Grosart's edition of =The
Scourge=.)
[6] =Philos and Licia= was probably not composed much before Oct. 2,
1606, when it was entered in =A Transcript of the Registers ...
1554-1640=, ed. Arber, III (London, 1876), 330. I have placed it first,
however, because of the undeserved neglect from which it has suffered
over the years and because of its literary superiority to the other
poems in the collection. I have placed =Pyramus and Thisbe= second
because, though not known to have been published prior to 1617, it was
doubtless composed by Nov. 25, 1596, the date given in the dedication,
and probably printed shortly thereafter in an edition now lost.
[7] "Thomas Heywood's =Art of Love= Lost and Found," =The Library=, III
(1922), 212.
[8] The Francis Freeling-Henry Huth-W. A. White copy, here reproduced
by courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library.
[9] These evident errors appear to have been corrected in ink on the
Bodleian copy of the 1620 impression, of which I have seen a
microfilm.
[10] Gerald Eades Bentley has gleaned and summarized a few additional
facts about Barksted in =The Jacobean and Caroline Stage=, II (Oxford,
1941), 357-358. For an account of the correspondences between =The
Insatiate Countess= and the poems, see R. A. Small, "The Authorship and
Date of =The Insatiate Countess=," =Harvard Studies and Notes in
Philology and Literature=, V (1896), 279-282. For a more recent survey
of Barksted's probable contribution to =The Insatiate Countess= see A.
J. Axelrad, =Un Malcontent Elizabethain: John Marston= (Paris, 1955),
pp. 86-90.
[11] The attribution was made by Thomas Corser in =Collectanea
Anglo-Poetica=, LII (Manchester, 1860), 24-25, and has been generally
accepted. In further support of Corser's attribution, one might
mention the anecdote in =Amos and Laura= about a merchant seaman,
followed by a vivid description of a storm at sea (pp. 228-229). Such
a tale and description are appropriate in a poem by Page, who had been
a naval chaplain and who published several sermons and other
devotional works for seamen.
[12] Francis Meres, =Palladis Tamia= (1598). Introduction by Don Cameron
Allen (New York, 1938), p. 284.
[13] Anthony a Wood, =Athenae Oxonienses and Fasti Oxonienses=, 2 vols.
in one (London, 1691), 467. Page was vicar of St. Nicholas Church in
Deptford from 1597 until his death in 1630.
[14] =Shakespeare's Ovid Being Arthur Golding's Translation of the
Metamorphoses=, ed. W. H. D. Rouse (London, 1904; reprinted Carbondale,
Ill. 1961), IV, 67-201; X. 327-605.
[15] Not Orpheus, as stated by Professor Douglas Bush in =Mythology and
the Renaissance Tradition= (Minneapolis, 1932), p. 183.
[16] =Shakespeare's Ovid=, X, 343-346.
[17] Despite these departures from Ovid, the British Museum Catalogue
continues to list this as a "translation" of Ovid's =Metamorphoses=, X.
For a somewhat later example of an actual translation of this tale,
considerably amplified, see James Gresham's (not Graham's, as in =STC=)
=The Picture of Incest, STC= 18969 (1626), ed. Grosart (Manchester,
1876). In idiomatic English, occasionally ornamented with such triple
epithets as "azure-veyned necke" and "Nectar-candied-words," Gresham
expands Golding's Ovid by more than 300 lines. Although he invents a
suitable brief description of Mirrha's nurse, whom he calls "old
trott," and throws in a few erotic tid-bits quite in the spirit of the
minor epic, he never departs from Ovid's story line and never
introduces descriptive detail of which there is not at least a hint in
Ovid.
[18] No. 95 in the edition cited below.
[19] Mary A. Scott, =Elizabethan Translations from the Italian= (Boston,
1916), pp. 20, 144.
[20] =Poems by Richard Linche, Gentleman= (=1596=), ed. Grosart, p. x; =The
Love of Dom Diego and Gynevra=, ed. Arber in =An English Garner=, VII
(Birmingham, 1883), 209.
[21] "The Source of Richard Lynche's 'Amorous Poeme of Dom Diego and
Ginevra,'" =PMLA=, LVIII (1943), 579-580.
[22] William Painter, =The Palace of Pleasure=, IV (London, 1929), 74.
(Actually, "Catheloigne" in Painter.)
[23] =Certain Tragical Discourses of Bandello=, trans. Geffraie Fenton
anno 1567. Introd. by Robert Langton Douglas, II (London, 1898), 239.
[24] Painter, I, No. 40, 153-158.
[25] Painter, I, 156.
[26] Painter, I, 157.
[27] Bush, p. 139.
[28] Two (=Philos and Licia, Amos and Laura=) employ the Marlovian
couplet, two (=Dom Diego= and =The Scourge=) the Shakespearean sixain, and
Barksted's two employ eight-line stanzas, with =Mirrha= rhyming
=_ababccdd_= (the Shakespearean stanza plus a couplet), and =Hiren=
rhyming =_ababbcac_=, a more tightly knit departure from Shakespeare's
stanza. The last, =Pyramus and Thisbe=, suggests its debt to both
masters--or plays both ends against the middle--by employing a 12
(2x6)-line stanza composed of couplets, with the last couplet having a
double rhyme probably designed to echo the concluding couplet of the
Shakespearean sixain.
[29] Thomas Lodge, =Scillaes Metamorphosis= in =Elizabethan Minor Epics=,
ed. Donno, p. 35, stanza 71.
[30] Yet =Dom Diego= seems not to have been previously identified as a
minor epic. The late C. S. Lewis, a few pages before his brilliant
discussion of =Hero and Leander= as an epyllion, refers to Lynche's poem
as a "stanzaic =novella=." See Lewis' =English Literature in the
Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama= (Oxford, 1954), p. 479, pp. 486-488.
[31] For a complete list of Burton's books in the Bodleian and Christ
Church libraries, numbering 581 and 473 items respectively, see "Lists
of Burton's Library," ed. F. Madan, =Oxford Bibliographical Society
Proceedings & Papers=, I, Part 3 (1925; printed 1926), 222-246.
[32] No. 376 in Ronald B. McKerrow, =Printers' & Publishers' Devices in
England & Scotland 1485-1640= (London, 1913), p. 144. According to
McKerrow, the bird in this handsome device, with the word "wick" in
its bill, is probably a smew, with a pun intended on the name of the
owner of the device, Smethwick.
[33] For these notes I am indebted to an excellent article, "The
library of Robert Burton," ed. F. Madan, p. 185 especially, in the
=Oxford Bibliographical Society= volume listed above.
[34] No. 240 in McKerrow, =Printers' Devices=, p. 92. "Framed device of
a lion passant crowned and collared, a mullet for difference, on an
anchor; with =Desir n'a repos=, and the date 1586."
[35] =A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers=, ed. R. B. McKerrow
(London, 1910), p. 151.
[36] Ibid., p. 199.
[37] Arber, =A Transcript=, IV, 149.
[38] Contributing to the unattractive appearance of the Bodleian copy
of =Mirrha=, which Grosart consulted, is the close cropping of its upper
margins.
[39] =The poems of William Barksted=, ed. Grosart (Manchester, 1876), p.
x.
[40] Barksted, p. xiv.
[41] Henry Plomer, =A Short History of English Printing= (London, 1900),
p. 163.
[42] The Oxford and Folger copies, of which only the first is listed
in the STC. There is a third, imperfect copy at Trinity College,
Cambridge, from the Edward Capell collection. According to Mr. L.W.
Hanson, Keeper of Printed Books at the Bodleian, the tipping of the
type in the Bodleian copy represents a fault at binding.
[43] Though the printer's name is not given, the printer's device, a
fleur-de-lis, no. 251 in McKerrow, was used by Okes about this time.
[44] Grosart, p. xiii, n. 17, stanza 20, line 7, which has
"adoration[e]" in both the original and Grosart's "corrected" version,
and p. xiii, n. 19, stanza 41, line 6, "graces" in both copies.
[45] The printer was Thomas Creede, as revealed by the printer's
device, no. 299 in McKerrow, p. 117: "Framed device of Truth being
scourged by a hand from the clouds. Between her feet the initials T.
C. The motto Viressit vulnere veritas."
[46] The presence of these dedicatory verses in the Huntington copy
has been noted by Franklin Williams in his =Index of Dedications and
Commendatory Verses= (London, 1962), p. 193.
[47] The Folger copy, here reproduced, is complete except for Sig. L4
(pp. 235-236), which have been supplied from another copy.
[48] This error goes back to the first entry in =A Catalogue of the
Library of Henry Huth= (London, 1880), which says the second edition is
the same as the first.
[49] The first word of the next stanza is changed from "And" in the
1613 edition to "Then" in the second impression.
[50] Rather surprisingly, in view of its silent emulation of Marlowe's
poem, =Philos and Licia= pays lavish tribute to Sidney. But since
tributes to Sidney were common in the period, this one may be no more
than a conventional recognition of his greatness.
[51] Occasionally, though, it introduces odd off-rhymes such as
"forth" and "mouth" (p. 5), "vaines" and "streames" (p. 6), "either"
and "fairer" (p. 8).
A
PLEASANT
AND DELIGHTFVLL
POEME OF
two Louers,
PHILOS
and
_LICIA_.