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XLI. The Sonnets in Tottel's Miscellany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William R. Parker
William R. Parker*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Extract

In Tottel's Miscellany there are 310 poems, including the thirty-nine added in the second edition of 1557. Of these 310, ninety-six are noted as by Wyatt, forty by Surrey, forty by Grimald, and 134 by “Vncertain auctours.” There are fifty-four sonnets in Tottel. Wyatt contributed twenty-seven, or exactly half. Surrey contributed fifteen; Grimald, three; the uncertain authors, nine. Rather more than one out of every six poems in the book is a sonnet. It is interesting that, among these fifty-four sonnets, fourteen different rime patterns are to be found. These constitute eloquent evidence of the mood of experimentation in which the English sonnet was conceived. It is a mistake to assume that Tottel contains only two types of sonnets, the Italian (or Petrarchian) and the English (or Shakespearian). Even if we define the first type loosely (and we must, when dealing with its early manifestation), there remain fifteen sonnets in the Miscellany which more or less defy classification. It is instructive to consider the various rime patterns in some detail. From them we may get, not only a suggestion of how the English sonnet evolved, but also a clue to the authorship of at least two sonnets by uncertain authors. A study of rime patterns is a narrow approach to the whole problem of sonnet technique, but, when applied to the English sonnet in its infancy, it has an unusual usefulness.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , September 1939 , pp. 669 - 677
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1939

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References

1 Throughout this paper references to the various poems in Tottel are by the numbers used in Hyder E. Rollins' edition, 2 vols. (1928–29). “The louer describeth his restlesse state” (Rollins 101), although listed as a single poem, is actually a double sonnet, and will be considered hereafter as two sonnets.

2 I shall not consider as sonnets the three 14-line poems with two rimes which were evidently rondeaux originally, but were altered to “sonnets,” probably not by Wyatt (Rollins nos. 69–70 and 103). Nor shall I consider as sonnets 14-line poems in rime royal; e.g., Rollins 177. Rollins first calls no. 187 a sonnet (ii, 104), then (ibid., p. 269) two rimeroyal stanzas. There are still other poems in Tottel which the authors may have considered sonnets; e.g., Rollins 189, 213, 277, and 299.

3 A. K. Foxwell, The Poems of Sir Thomas Wiat, 2 vols. (1913). It is no. 25 in her edition.

4 A Study of Sir Thomas Wyatt's Poems (1911), p. 84.

5 Surrey doubtless started writing sonnets as a result of Wyatt's example and encouragement. Either he never saw Wyatt's (early?) experiments with 4- and 5-rime patterns, or else he considered them inferior to (or more difficult than) the patterns which Wyatt was using at the time their acquaintance began. Hence, in creating a new sonnet form he imitated and carried one step further the (latest?) experiments of his master and friend. Surrey never attempted any 4-rime, 5-rime, or 6-rime sonnets; Surrey did actually use several patterns which Wyatt evolved apparently late in his career; and it is clear that by combining the alternate rimes of Wyatt (Rollins no. 84) with the 7-rime pattern of Wyatt (Rollins no. 101), we have the form known as “Shakespearian.” An argument for a reciprocal influence may be found in the forthcoming study of Surrey by Miss Ruth Hughey.

6 Foxwell, Poems, i, 38.

7 Rollins no. 9 is attributed to Lord Vaux in the Arundel MS, although it is given as Surrey's in Tottel. F. M. Padelford says, “If by Surrey, it is not Surrey at his best.” The Poems of Henry Howard Earl of Surrey, rev. ed. (1928), p. 209. If I am right in thinking this one of Surrey's earliest experiments, made in direct imitation of Wyatt, Padelford's observation is explained and the Tottel attribution (usually reliable) is justified. On the other hand, the rhythm is not like Surrey's, and Surrey rarely used weak endings as rime words.

8 Op. cit., ii, 104.

9 Rollins, op. cit., ii, 79.

10 This is pure conjecture, of course. Grimald might have been the author of no. 232. Some of them might be “Sackuyldes Sonetts sweetely sauste and featly fyned” of which Jasper Heywood wrote in 1560. Heywood no doubt used the word sonnet in an untechnical sense, but Sackville did write a strictly Shakespearian sonnet, prefacing Sir Thomas Hoby's translation of the Courtier (1561). That Sackville knew and admired both Wyatt and Surrey's poetry is clear from his mention of them in the St. John's College MS. See Marguerite Hearsey's edition of Sackville's MS (1936), pp. 5–6, 25, etc. Miss Ruth Hughey thinks that no. 173 “well might be” by Surrey or John Harington (see note 5 above).

11 Op. cit., ii, 108.

12 To Tottel and most of his contemporaries the term sonnet meant merely a song, or lyric. On signature Dd. iir of the first edition of the Miscellany, below the head-line, we read: “Other Songes and sonettes written by sir Thomas wiat the elder.” This was certainly put there by Tottel, and we note that among the poems following there are no sonnets. The head-line changes from “Songes and Sonettes” to “Songes” in the section devoted to Grimald, although in this section are three English sonnets. On the other hand, although the term meant little to Tottel, he (or whoever arranged the poems in the miscellany) was able to recognize the form. In the Surrey section, nine sonnets are grouped together (Rollins nos. 6–14); the Wyatt section begins with a sequence of fifteen sonnets; and later in the same section there is another sequence of ten (Rollins nos. 94–102), which is followed by a rondeau masquerading as a sonnet.

13 No. 38 in Rollins' ed. (1927).

14 Rollins' ed. (1926), pp. 56, 69, 108; 111; 58.

15 “Of person rare,” in the Arundel MS and Nugae Antiquae (1804), ii, 329–330, 326. Harington's other known sonnet,“ Marvaylous be thie matcheles gyftes of mynde,” has a 6-rime pattern abab cacd eded ff.

16 J. W. Cunliffe, ed. The Complete Works of George Gascoigne (1907), i, 67–68.

17 J. W. Hebel and H. H. Hudson, Poetry of the English Renaissance (1934), p. 953.

18 Op. cit., pp. 324, 394, and 59 respectively.

19 Op. cit., pp. 471–472. Italics mine.

20 Miss Hughey informs me, however, that the two poems just preceding this in Tottel are attributed to Lord Vaux in the Arundel MS. She adds (in a letter, 23 June, 1938): “Certainly I think ‘O Petrarke hed’ could not be Surrey's.... Both Petrarch poems may be Wyatt's, as you suggest.”

21 This is a conjecture which I do not press. The name of Petrarch's mistress is twice spelled “Laura” in the first poem, and twice “Lawra” in the second; the second sonnet concedes Petrarch's greatness, but denies without qualification the assertion that “ther was neuer Laura more then one.” The third line may allude gracefully to Wyatt's sonnet beginning, “Was neuer file yet half so well yfiled.” Professor Rollins declared (in a letter dated 11 April, 1937) that if the second sonnet is not by Wyatt, “he seems to be a better poet.” Line 8 is certainly excellent.

22 E.g. Rollins nos. 39–40, 44, 49–50, 75, 84, 96–97, 99–101.

23 See also Rollins nos. 2 and 36, by Surrey.

24 Professor Rollins has, of course, noticed it, but this truly significant poem seems to have been ignored by most anthologies and studies of English prosody. It is not in the Arundel MS.

25 It should be noted, however, that contrary to some generalizations, Milton employed seven different rime patterns, concluded four sonnets with a couplet, and put the “turn” at the end of line eight in at least eleven of his twenty-three sonnets.

26 Op. cit., ii, 297.

27 Poems, ii, 33.