“We Two Boys Together Clinging”: The Earl of Surrey and the Duke of Richmond

Abstract

“WE TWO BOYS TOGETHER CLINGING” : THE EARL OF SURREY AND THE DUKE OF RICHMOND S T E P H E N G U Y -B R A Y Trent University S o crewell prison” is a useful poem for historians of English poetry: Sur­ rey, always (and now perhaps primarily) associated with technical innova­ tion, is said in this poem and in some others to be beginning the tradition of the English elegy. But this is not the only possible generic description. The classification of “So crewell prison” as an elegy has, practically speaking, ruled out the possibility that the poem could fit into other kinds of poetry, and criticism has tended to concentrate on the poem’s connections to the elegy to the exclusion of other poetic and generic considerations. I want to look at these other considerations, to suggest alternative generic contexts for the poem in order to suggest alternative ways to read the poem. Although “So crewell prison” is undeniably an elegy, it is, equally undeniably, not just an elegy; and my emphasis here is on the poem as a love poem and on its relation to other love poems. The best way into the subject is to examine the different classifications of “So crewell prison” made by Surrey’s two most important editors, Frederick Morgan Padelford and Emrys Jones. Critics have tended to follow Jones’s lead in discussing the poem; I want to suggest that Padelford’s classifica­ tion is ultimately more helpful. Padelford’s edition of the poems of Surrey was originally published in 1920. “So crewell prison,” which Padelford calls “The Poets Lament for His Lost Boyhood,” is classified as an autobiograph­ ical poem and, as such, is grouped with the satire on London, the sonnet to Geraldine, “When Windesor walles,” “Good ladies, you that have your pleasure in exyle,” and others. It is not with the “Elegiac Poems,” a group that has the three tributes to Sir Thomas Wyatt and the sonnet to Thomas Clere. In Jones’s edition, published in 1964, “So crewell prison” is grouped with the sonnet to Clere, “When Windesor walles,” and several other poems under the heading of “Ethical and Elegiac Poems,” while “Good ladies” and the sonnet to Geraldine are classified as “Amatory Poems.” This examination of the classification of “So crewell prison” is, of course, more than a bibliographic exercise. The editorial decisions that I have men­ tioned are prompted by ideological considerations. While Jones wants to draw a distinction between elegy and love poem and to emphasize the ele­ giac nature of “So crewell prison,” Padelford sees the important distinction 138 among those poems of Surrey’s that are not translations as being between poems that tell us about the poet and poems that tell us about other peo­ ple ( “Elegiac Poems” ), about (presumably imagined) romantic situations (“Love Poems” ), or about how we should live (“Moral and Didactic Po­ ems” ). In Padelford’s time, literary criticism was, after all, still an enterprise largely based on biography. The autobiographical element in “So crewell prison” has usually been taken to be a reference to Surrey’s actual impris­ onment in Windsor Castle. This is the political context for the poem; the poetic context has always been assumed to be Surrey’s elegies and his son­ net “When Windesor walles.” While acknowledging the importance to “So crewell prison” of these contexts, I want to suggest a larger poetic context, one which includes both Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and Surrey’s own “0 lothsome place.” The advantage to this project of Padelford’s grouping is that it suggests a way of looking at “So crewell prison” in which the poem can be read simultaneously as an elegy, a political statement, and as a love poem. The third classification— “So crewell prison” as a love poem — is the one that has been discussed least often in studies of Surrey. The usual critical assumption is that what Surrey felt for Richmond was friendship rather than romantic love, but it seems to me that this is not a distinction that can be supported from the poem. What Surrey does in “So crewell prison” is to depict his relationship with Richmond...