The Rivalrous Emotions in Surrey’s “So crewell prison”

Abstract

In “So crewell prison,” the Earl of Surrey mourns both the death of an intimate boyhood friend—the Duke of Richmond, illegitimate son and probable heir to King Henry VIII—and the loss of their shared adolescent life. Despite the poem’s obvious grief, this essay argues that “So crewell prison” is equally marked by a darker affective register: sentiments of envy, jealousy, and aggression that fester in Surrey’s memory. Informed by both early modern thinking on emotion and the findings of current research in the sciences and humanities, my analysis unpacks these ambivalent, rivalrous dynamics of “So crewell prison.”