ReviewEMS8

Review of English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700, volume 8, edited by Peter Beal, The British Library, 2000, by Roy Davids - published in Antiquarian Book Monthly, February 2001

A book that begins with a piece of Jacobean lavatory paper ('I send you a leaf torn off for use on my filthy fundament') and embraces the lives and work of Beaumont, Jonson, Ford, Carew, Lawes, Donne and Rochester promises to be a rollicking read or of wide appeal.

This one is neither. But then its stated ambitions are drier: to provide 'a forum for inter-disciplinary investigation of both medieval and Renaissance manuscripts...aims to stimulate awareness of the possibilities of manuscript study in general [and]...seeks to encourage wider exploitation of scribal practices and of all aspects of textual transmission in manuscript, as well as offering scope for detailed examination of authors' holographs.'

In most respects the eighth volume of this periodical is exemplary in fulfilling its own mission, which is not to say the quality of work is without its undulations, or that it is free from self-indulgence.

The first article ('Francis Beaumont and Nathan Field: New Records of their Early Years') is the best, in terms of style, presentation, clarity and research. The last ('Manuscripts at Auction [and in booksellers' catalogues]') is the least useful, being a list which only has any real point if exhaustive and yet by its own admission is only a 'guide'. The third ('The "Running Masque" Recovered') is the most important. The second the most wrong-headed.

The second, '"As far from all Reuolt": Sir John Salusbury, Christ Church MS 184 and Ben Jonson's First Ode', is something of a triumph of wishful thinking over the responsible use of evidence and forensic skills, exemplifying the dangers of allowing speculation to run from possibility into probability and from probability into a trellis of fact. The presence of a bound-in autograph poem by Ben Johnson in John Salusbury's miscellany is coupled with Salusbury's attendance at the Middle Temple at the same time as some of Johnson's close friends and together they are transmuted into 'Salusbury and Jonson were friends [and]...closely associated [and]...knew each other well.' Similarly, the facts that the autograph manuscript was in Salusbury's possession (we are told he wrote on the conjugate leaf) and was bound into his miscellany in the 1620s, and the existence of a second volume in the hand of later member of the family, compiled after John Salusbury's death (1612) and containing poems by various authors including Jonson, are used to underpin the 'friendship'. Do they really prove anything more than that at least two members of the family had an interest in poetry? Incidentally, it seems questionable that the poem is as 'politically sensitive' as it is talked up to be, especially when not addressed to anyone in particular, as in this manuscript, and out of a London context, as does the interpretation of an evident degree of haste in his writing it out as revealing that Johnson 'knew the subject matter was sensitive' rather than that he was just in some hurry at the time.

The likewise unsupported notion, not uninteresting in itself, that Jonson's poem could possibly have been addressed to Robert Earl of Essex rather than James Earl of Desmond (the latter's name first appears over the poem in the 1640 edition of Jonson's Works; the former's no where) serves, we are advised, 'to clarify Jonson's early biography, his connections to the Essex circle and his community of friends in London at the time he emerges as a significant literary figure.' There is, in fact, no more real proof produced that Essex was one of Jonson's 'best-lov'd' friends than that Desmond was or was not, nor, just because some of his kinsmen were, that John Salusbury (otherwise noted in this article as especially circumspect politically) was involved in any way at all with Essex's Revolt (though he is nonetheless described as 'closely associated' with it) -- and yet it is largely on the possibility that he might have been approached to join Essex's enterprise and the supposition that he and Jonson were friends that Jonson is assumed to have personally given Salusbury the poem and this in turn becomes part of the reason for thinking that the poem might have been addressed to Essex not Desmond. Circles of this kind do not make for even 'an (informed) hypothesis'.

Speculation, a necessity forced on scholars of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods by gaps in evidence, is used in well-balanced ways elsewhere in this volume. But it is perhaps worth commenting on the real dangers that lie in elevating peripheral connections into friendships, especially at a time when the relatively small size of the population, multiple marriages (particularly by men) and the relatively small extent of any circle (aristocracy, court, lawyers, intellectuals etc) make it possible to find some connection between almost everyone of any port and worship. To adapt Sir Paddy Ashdown, casual sex does not necessarily mean a heavy affair, nor living together make marriage a certainty. Because Virginia Woolf knew James Strachey and the Hogarth Press printed Freud's work does not make her a Freudian writer, which she was not. When it comes down to it, it is only a supposition that Jonson himself gave Salusbury the manuscript -- it was bound in, not even copied in Jonson's own hand into an existing book -- and there is no real evidence that they actually knew, let alone liked, one another at all. So perhaps it is not altogether surprising, therefore, that 'no- one has written [before] about the textual, literary or historical context of this important early poem.'

Just how useful are the 'biblio'graphical descriptions of manuscripts which appear fully marshalled in a number of the articles? It displays a certain rashness in a scholar to rely on the accuracy of those who went before him. Poor old Gary Taylor gets it in the neck from one contributor for relying on a statement in the Index of English Literary Manuscripts compiled by Peter Beal, the editor of the volume under review, who in turn had relied on a description by A.S.W. Rosenbach (see p. 86). [Certainly, however, it is better to reproduce watermarks photographically, as Peter Beal does in his own article on the so-called 'Gower Manuscript' of Carew's poems, than to give references to the rather limited number of works on the subject.] Some of these 'biblio'graphical descriptions, as well perhaps as some of the appendices and lists, printed in the volume might have received the attention of the editor's pencil; their usefulness to anyone other that the author of the particular article being sometimes difficult to gauge.

Even for those practising an arcane and inbred mystery, there are a number of infelicitous and/or odd usages in the volume: 'contextualise'; 'intertextuality'; 'interpenetration'; 'fabular'; 'separates'; 'intramural'; 'topoi'; 'conventionality'; 'consequentiality'; and 'inscribed' (used by Dennis Flynn eight times where 'written' would have done). Incidentally, the illustrations in Professor Flynn's article ('Donne Manuscripts in Cheshire') suggest that the Duke of Westminster needs to apply for a grant for the conservation of some of his manuscripts.

These comments notwithstanding, the volume contains some important and worthy contributions to manuscript studies and to the lives and works of the poets, dramatists and musicians who come under consideration in it. The British Library should be commended for its support of what is a significant but nonetheless a somewhat minority pursuit.

The book is expensive at £45, but then its circulation will doubtless be limited. For a volume containing 340 pages and measuring 238 x 158 mm, it is, at 775 grams, uncommonly heavy......but there I go getting caught up in a physical description.