The Literary Glocal: Sir Walter Aston between Staffordshire and Madrid

Abstract

England's ambassador in Madrid from 1620 to 1624 and from 1635 to 1638, Sir Walter Aston was a fluent speaker of Castilian and convert to Catholicism. His interest in Spanish literary culture, in circulation of poetry in manuscript, and in translation played a key role in his negotiation of the religious and political differences that affected him and his circle personally and divided the state he served. The Astons' ambivalent position made them valuable intermediaries and at the same time vulnerably peripheral. Alexander Samson identifies a key performance witnessed by Aston in Spain on the eve of the Spanish match that is linked with a sonnet found in Secretary of State Edward Conway's papers and with the later translation by Aston's secretary, Sir Richard Fanshawe, of Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza's play Querer por sólo querer.