Unpublished Elizabethan Sonnets in a Legal Manuscript from the Cambridge University Library

Abstract

This article has its starting point in a late Elizabethan legal manuscript, compiled, probably in the 1580s, by Ralph Stawell, a gentleman and lawyer from the Middle Temple. Two folios of the manuscript contain ten unpublished Petrarchan sonnets and seven couplets embedded in Middle Temple notes: as well as reproducing the manuscript poems the article also prints these with annotation. It thus presents a new example, sharply contextualized by its manuscript setting, of the typical conjunction of law and poetry in the period and confirms that literary material of more than average merit may be found among its legal papers. It also offers an unusual case of mise-en-page of late Elizabethan sonnets in manuscript and adds significant new material to a poetic genre in full vogue at the time, the Petrarchan sonnet. Not the least valuable feature of J. H. Baker's invaluable Catalogue of English Legal Manuscripts in Cambridge University Library' is the way in which it brings non-legal materials to light. The starting point of this article is one such legal manuscript, Hh 3.8, of the late Elizabethan period. Two of its folios2 contain ten unpublished Petrarchan sonnets and seven couplets embedded within Middle Temple notes. The general interest of the article is to present a new example, sharply contextualized by its manuscript setting, of the typical conjunction of law and poetry: 'An Ovid with a Littleton', in Randolph's later phrasing.3 As P. J. Finkelpearl puts it, 'during the period between Wyatt and Surrey and the appearance of Spenser and Sidney all the poets, in fact all writers of any value, were connected with the Inns of Court'.4 Thomas Watson's headnote to Sonnet LXVII in his Hekatompathia (1582) proves that Elizabethan lawyers were fond of sonnets.5 Lastly, Sir John Davies, This article is dedicated to the late Jeremy Maule, who first mentioned the manuscript and read the preliminary drafts extensively.