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An Early Lovelace Text
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The rarity of manuscript versions of Lovelace's poems gives considerable significance to the discovery of an early text of the Sonnet beginning, “When I by thy faire shape did sweare.” The lyric was set to music by William Lawes, and is found on folio 2056 (meaning 256) of John Gamble's manuscript collection of songs in the New York City Public Library. The text has never been printed nor collated in print; and the variants reveal that Lovelace was not—as his editors and critics have maintained—careless in revision.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1945
References
Note 1 in page 382 The Poems of Richard Lovelace, Edited by C. H. Wilkinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925) in 2 vols.; i, lxiii, and f. In commenting upon the rarity of Lovelace texts, Wilkinson states that Lucasta (1649) and Lucasta. Posthum Poems (1659), are “the sole authority for the text. The second edition did not appear for over 150 years.” With the exception of a few engraved lines and some contemporary MSS of the song To Althea. From Prison, “there is nothing of any importance.”
Note 2 in page 382 There is an account of John Gamble's collection of manuscript songs in my “Lawes' Version of Shakespeare's Sonnet, cxvi,” PMLA, li (March, 1936), 120.
Note 3 in page 382 Wilkinson (op, cit., i, lxxiv, and f.) reviews the history of Lovelace editing. In the note to p. 40, Wilkinson comments upon the fact that the Lovelace Sonnet was “Set by Mr. William Lawes,” and adds, “I have not been able to find the setting to this….”
Note 4 in page 382 Hazlitt, W. Carew, in the introduction to Lucasta (London, 1864), xxxiv, and f…. “we are naturally led to the inference that Lovelace, in writing, accepted from indolence or haste, the first word which happened to occur to his mind. Daniel, Drayton, and others were, it is well known, indefatigable revisers of their poems; they ‘added and altered many times,‘… We can scarcely picture to ourselves Lovelace blotting a line, though it would have been well for his reputation, if he had blotted many.” H. J. C. Grierson, Metaphysical Poets. Donne to Butler (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921), Preface, xxxvi…. “the majority of the poems are careless….” Wilkinson, op. cit., i., lix. “His faults are obvious; he is often careless and obscure because of his carelessness, not as Donne, because of the complexity or subtlety of his thought.”
Note 5 in page 382 Gamble himself set to music some of Lovelace's stanzas and would have been interested in obtaining correct copies of the poems. And Lovelace apparently approved of Gamble in that the poet referred to the composer in complimentary terms in the commendatory verse addressed to Thomas Stanley, and prefixed to Gamble's Ayres and Dialogues (1657). The Lawes brothers and Gamble as prominent members of the same profession would have been thrown together at musical entertainments, in taverns, and elsewhere. The number of the Lawes brothers' compositions that Gamble copied testifies to the admiration in which the latter held the brother composers.
Note 6 in page 382 Fuller's Worthies gives the most detailed contemporary account of the composer's life. I have attempted to give the main facts concerning William Lawes' career in Henry Lawes, Musician and Friend of Poets, MLA Revolving Fund Series, xi (1941); see index under “Lawes, William, brother of Henry.”
Note 7 in page 383 It would seem likely that the lyric was set to music during some period when the poet and the composer were thrown together. They were both at Oxford apparently during the King's visit in 1636. At that time Lovelace received an M.A. degree, and William Lawes provided the music for one song for The Royal Slaw and one song for The City Match. See Henry Lawes, pp. 122, 129. From 1636 until 1642 the poet and the musician were in more or less regular attendance at court and must have had frequent meetings. When in 1642 the King retired to Oxford with his court, William Lawes would naturally have accompanied His Majesty. At this time Lovelace was imprisoned in the Gatehouse at Westminster; and after his release he was not permitted to leave London. I have not found any evidence that the musician and the poet were together after 1642.
Note 8 in page 383 I am indebted to the New York Public Library Authorities for permission to print the reproduction of the song, and to the British Museum Authorities for permission to print the reproduction of the printed text from the first edition of Lucasta. The shelf number of the latter is P2S928; 238b52. This copy is described by Wilkinson, op. cit., i, lxvii, and f.
Note 9 in page 383 I have substituted s for throughout.
Note 10 in page 384 Fuller said there was no difference between Henry and William in “eminency, affection, or otherwise.” Concerning Henry's theories regarding the fitting of notes to words, see Henry Lawes, p. 187, and f. Aurelian Townshend in a commendatory poem addressed to the “Incomparable Brothers,” praised their art and called them “Brothers in blood, in Science and Affection.” Choice Psalmes (1648). Francis Sambrooke in a commendatory poem to the brothers printed in the same volume, says that their “equalitie/ Of worth,” makes it impossible to tell “Which does the greatest, and the highest owne.” The great affection which poets had for William was not expressed because he changed their words. The following persons wrote verse in praise of the composer: Robert Herrick, John Wilson, John Taylor, John Cob, Edmund Foster, Simon Ives, John Jenkins, John Hilton, Thomas Jordan, Robert Heath, John Tatham, Mildmay, Earl of Westmoreland; and several others referred to William in poems addressed primarily to Henry.
Note 11 in page 384 Lucasta. The Poems of Richard Lovelace, Esq., Edited by W. Carew Hazlitt (London, 1864).
Note 12 in page 384 Lucasta. The Poems of Richard Lovelace, Edited by William Lyon Phelps (Chicago: The Caxton Club, 1921), in 2 vols. i, 47.
Addendum. Since I submitted this article for publication, Dr. Charles W. Hughes has permitted me to read in MS a study called The Commonplace Book of John Gamble. Dr. Hughes includes in this paper brief biographies of the composers whose songs are found in the volume, analyses of several of the compositions, and an account of Gamble as copyist and composer.
Note 13 in page 385 Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (1691) ii, 146–147 and quoted by Wilkinson, op. cit., i, Appendix i. Lovelace was “accounted by all those that well knew him, to have been a person well vers'd in the Greek and Lat. Poets, in Musick, whether practical or theoretical, instrumental or vocal, and in other things befitting a Gentleman.”
Note 14 in page 385 The conditions under which Lovelace performed his revisions would not appear to have been very favorable. Cyril Hughes Hartmann, The Cavalier Spirit (London, 192S), 117. Lucasta was “one of the worst ‘books’ printed in a period of exceptionally slovenly production. The editing seems to have been careless in the extreme…. A possible explanation of this curious disorder, though there is no evidence to support the conjecture, may be that Lovelace was still in prison when the book was sent to the printer, and so was obliged to relegate the entire production to his tender mercies.”
Note 15 in page 385 Such as perhaps bad taste or poor judgment. Or, still more likely, the poet took it for granted that his readers would be familiar with his seventeenth-century world. In a forthcoming article I hope to present evidence that several of the poems that have baffled modern readers were clear enough to Lovelace's contemporaries.