Editing Stuart Poetry

Abstract

In 1615, a group of Oxford men were present at a visit of King James I to Cambridge; one of them, Richard Corbett, wrote a satirical poem about the occasion that has come to be known as the “Oxford Ballad.” A number of equally satirical and sometimes hostile poems were written in response to Corbett’s, as were other verses on the same occasion. Many manuscript copies of Corbett’s poem survive today, a number of which record it—in different forms—alongside these responses and further poems. Through an analysis of the “Oxford Ballad” and these other poems, this article considers the ways in which accumulation and response might be regarded as editorial principles at work in the early transmission of Stuart poetry, and also principles for modern editions of that poetry: editions that would not only record but also shape themselves around the occasions on which poetry was written, the social exchanges that provoked it, and the accretion of extra stanzas and lines, as well as additional poetry, that complicate the singular agency of the author.