English Manuscript Studies

Citation

Beal, P. and Ioppolo, G. (2004), "English Manuscript Studies", Library Review, Vol. 53 No. 3, pp. 186-186. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530410526592

Like previous volumes in the admirable English Manuscript Studies series, this compilation of essays is firmly aimed at an academic audience. In this case, the ten themed articles are largely based on papers presented at the first annual conference on “Manuscripts and their Makers in the English Renaissance”, convened by Grace Ioppolo at the University of Reading in 2000. Concentrating on English literary manuscripts, the authors set out to prove that manuscripts are key to understanding the socialization of the text in the Renaissance period. From verse anthologies to archival business documents, the items under scrutiny range from one page fragments to sets of volumes constituting hundreds of pages, encompassing the works of greats such as Sir Philip Sidney and John Donne to lesser known “local” poets such as Leonard Ashcroft.

Highlights include Peter Beal's investigation of an earlier unrecorded variant copy of Sidney's Letter to Queen Elizabeth; in a wide ranging, and intriguing essay, he demonstrates not only the textual complexities of Renaissance manuscript culture, but also how closely allied such composition was to the dangerous politics of the day. Katherine Duncan‐Jones' more inconclusive article focuses on an embryonic four leaf fragment of Hugh Holland's fanciful love story between Owen Tudor and Catherine of Valois. Best known as an author of commendatory verse, Holland's biographical details are fleshed out to place his work in context, vividly portraying a rather hot‐blooded, self obsessed man of enormous self‐ambition whose attempts to win courtly favour through poetry go horribly wrong. Arthur M. Marotti's essay on a short poetical anthology that once belonged to Anne Cornwallis stresses the cultural importance of a woman's involvement in the manuscript system of literary transmission, and more importantly, publishes for the first time several unique poems. Focusing on the question of authorial drafts, but interspersed with many fascinating asides, Grace Ioppolo's study of the archival documents of the theatrical entrepreneur and agent Philip Henslowe is a riveting explanation of how theatre worked in the early 17th century.

The Henslowe documents have been neglected earlier by textual scholars even though they are obviously a rich primary source of information. As a librarian in a Special Collections Department, it is always heartening to hear about research that has made such sense of the raw materials in our care. Ultimately, however, reading this volume from cover to cover left me with an overall feeling of disappointment. That Renaissance manuscripts are fascinating and important conveyers of information about the circulation and reception of texts is without question. It is also undisputed that the stability of many of these texts is questionable and that establishing original authorial intent is a considerable challenge. But although the papers here obviously result from much solid and painstaking research, on the whole they do not really come up with any truly fresh insights or revelations. Indeed, in attempting to contextualize the manuscripts, there is a tendency to provide so much background information that some of the essays read like extended genealogies rather than studies of the primary sources themselves. Such articles are of interest, but will probably only appeal to the English Renaissance specialist on a selective basis.