Imitation in the Scottish Sonnet

Abstract

N THE YEAR 1585, the Italian sonnet was on the decline. Tasso, Bembo, and Tansillo had produced their main collections and only minor poets like Bonanno or Coppetta were regularly composing in the genre. In France it had just passed the heights of popularity. Ronsard's Sonnets pour Helene had been out for seven years and Desportes was already succeeding as premier poete. In England a second group of sonneteers, led by Spenser, were following the early lead of Wyatt and Surrey. Yet it was in this year that the first collection of Scottish sonnets made their belated appearance in print. Seventeen appeared in the introduction to James VI's Essayes of a Prentise, no fewer than twelve having been written by the King himself.' Thus began a movement which was to produce more then 850 sonnets and reach its heights in the work of Drummond of Hawthornden, perhaps the least original of all great British poets. In this however, Hawthornden was merely imitating the example of his Scottish sonneteering predecessors. With the wealth of European poetry to choose from, they borrowed freely from French, Italian, and English sources. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent and nature of their plunder. Drummond's own sources will be ignored, as they have been well covered by Kastner. James VI consciously set out to become the new Maecenas of Scottish poetry. In 1585 he composed a critical treatise entitled Ane Schort Treatise Conteining some Reulis and Cautelis to be obseruit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie. In this he drew up poetic rules to be observed by the literati with whom he surrounded himself at the Edinburgh