The Literary and Political Activity of Manuscript Verse Collectors

Abstract

Bodleian MS Rawl. poet. 85, fol. 1r ('Verses made by the queine when she was/ supposed to be in loue w th mountsyre.//When I was fayre and younge and fauour graced me'). Transcribed in Laurence Cummings, 'John Finet's Miscellany' (PhD diss., Washington University, 1960), 79. Steven May Wnds Queen Elizabeth I the most likely, yet not the certain, author of the poem, judging from this attribution and another to her in British Library MS Harley 7392, pt. 2, fol. 21v. The only other early modern ascription, in Folger MS V.a.89, p. 12, assigns it to Edward de Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford. Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works (New York: Washington Square Press, 2004), 26-27. 2 The printed account of the entertainment describes its performance: On Wednesday morning, about nine of the clock, as her Maiestie opened a casement of her gallerie window, ther were three excellent Musitians, who being disguised in auncient countrey attire, did greet her with a pleasant song of Coridon and Phyllida, made in three parts of purpose. The song, as well for the worth of the Dittie, as for the aptnes of the note thereto applied, it pleased her Highnesse, after it had beene once sung, to command it againe, and highly to grace it with her chearefull acceptance and commendation. The Honorable Entertainement gieuen to the Queenes Maiestie in Progresse, at Eluetham in Hampshire (London: Iohn Wolfe, 1591; STC 7583), sig. D2v. resists Corridon's advances ('He woulde loue and she woulde not'), recalling the coyness of the 'fayre and younge' Elizabeth who likewise denied her admirers. Phillida, however, avoids the mistake for which the queen repents just two leaves earlier in the manuscript, by Wnally acquiesing: 'Loue that had bene longe deluded/Was with kisses sweet concluded.'3 By placing these complementary poems written by and for Elizabeth in such proximity, this manuscript verse collector exhibited love poetry that she approved. He also established, at the outset of his miscellany, the initial theme of the coy mistress. He then varied or countered this theme by featuring, on the very next leaf, a poem about another initially resistant, but ultimately compliant, woman, who nevertheless proves quite distinct from the coy mistresses of court literature. The female speaker of this poem employs diction that recalls Breton's pastoral characters (who say, 'Yea, and nay, and faythe and trouthe'), as she responds in graphic detail to a man while he coerces her to have sex. She begins the poem by protesting: Naye, phewe nay pishe? nay faythe and will ye, fye. A gentlman deale thus? in truthe ille crye. Gods bodye, what means this? naye fye for shame Nay, Nay, come, come, nay faythe yow are to blame. Harcke sombodye comes, leaue of I praye When such verbal resistance fails, the speaker threatens to resist physically: 'Ile pinche, ille spurne, Ile scratche.' Yet she soon turns attention from her own actions to those of the man: You hurt marr my ruVs, you hurte my back, my nose will bleed Looke, looke the doore is open some bodye sees, What will th...