The Hazardous Lives of the Sonneteers

  

This essay is an attempt to be more popular and journalistic than usual.  I shall be curious to see what readership the following piece attracts. I am contemplating a similar article on the scandals of the Romantic poets.

  

     Were an Elizabethan or Jacobean sonneteer to appear in a cartoon strip, he would probably be depicted as a mincing aesthete, a sort of Percy Dovetonsils in doublet and breeches, yet anyone with the sketchiest knowledge of history would know that poetry was associated with powerful men in those days.   The sonnet form in particular was associated with courtiers who were, of course, warriors as well, suffering the chances of combat, including becoming prisoners of war.  In addition a significant percentage of prominent poets in Elizabeth’s time were imprisoned at home by their own queen, always on the lookout for signs of opposition to her will, while others fell afoul of the ordinary criminal laws.  The life expectancy of members of the ruling class was limited by the fact that under an absolute monarchy in which the will of the ruler is law, a court will inevitably be filled with back-biting and tale-telling among ambitious aristocrats quite willing to sacrifice their rivals while seeking to advance their own prospects.

     The link between high nobility and the arts was emphasized in Castiglione’s The Courtier, published in English translation by Thomas Hoby in 1561, which emphasized that the best courtier, the noblest aristocrat, must cultivate excellence of all sorts, not only athletic and martial abilities, but aesthetic skills as well, including the practice of music, painting, and poetry.  Verbal skills, honed by literary study, Castiglione argues, allow the courtier to be at once more beautiful and more persuasive.    

     Since his own time, Sir Philip Sidney has been considered the embodiment of Castiglione’s ideal.  Strikingly handsome, valorous in war and accomplished in sports, quick and clever in conversation yet discerning in judgement, he was always the faithful servant of the queen.  The center of his career was his work as parliamentarian, soldier, ambassador, and counsellor to Elizabeth.  His masterful sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella was not published until five years after his death and then only because faulty pirated editions were already circulating. 

     Dead before his thirty-second birthday from a wound received at the Battle of Zutphen, his character inspired legends immediately.  He was said to have removed the thigh armor that could have prevented his mortal injury when he noticed that one of the men under his command had incomplete armor.  As he lay bleeding, water was brought which he was said to have declined, offering it to a comrade with the words "Thy necessity is yet greater than mine."

     Despite his conformity to his culture’s standards, even Sidney might have suffered an even earlier end due to his bold advocacy in a time of customs that seem today savage.  Though at the age of eighteen he was a member of the embassy sent to seek to arrange Elizabeth’s marriage to the Catholic Duke of Alençon, as a Protestant partisan he fervently opposed the union and quarreled with Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, to the point of challenging de Vere to a duel.  Fortunately for literary history the queen ordered that they not fight.  The young Sidney persisted in writing a letter detailing his strong opposition to the match, attracting her disapproval of his presumption and prompting his temporary absence at court. 

    The sonnet form had been introduced in England by Sir Thomas Wyatt with translations of Petrarch and original compositions.  Though his father had been incarcerated and tortured under Richard III, the elder Wyatt then became Privy Counsellor when Henry VII and after him Henry VIII succeeded.   By his late teens the son was already a prominent figure in court, taking a ceremonial role, for instance, as the champion of the Castle of Loyalty during the Christmas celebrations of 1526.  As a teenager he was named Esquire of the Body serving as a personal attendant and confidant of the king and a few years later acquired the remarkable title of Sewer Extraordinary. 

     Though popular, Wyatt was known as an impulsive, headstrong individual, and, from the testimony of his contemporaries as well as from his poetry, a passionate lover.  With a reputation as a ladies’ man, he surprised no one when he separated from his wife after three years and accused her of adultery while conceding as well his own infidelity. 

     He was meanwhile active as a negotiator, ambassador, and advisor to the throne.  On a mission to Italy in 1527 he insisted on parting with his company, saying he was “desirous to see the country” and was taken prisoner by forces controlled by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V who demanded a substantial ransom for his release.  A captive of unpredictable soldiers on the edge of mutiny, he was certainly in mortal danger, but he did go free.  It is unclear if the money was paid – some think he was repaying the debt for years --  or if perhaps he escaped, but he did manage to return to his own country unscathed.

    Before long however, he aroused Henry’s ire.  He had been a childhood friend of Anne Boleyn, and some whispered that he was paying particular her attention even when she was the queen consort.  The unfortunate Boleyn had given birth to Elizabeth but subsequently suffered three miscarriages, trying the king’s patience.  Henry turned his attentions to Jane Seymour and sought to remove Boleyn.  She was seized and placed in the Tower of London, accused of a series of ill-documented crimes including treason, and beheaded.

     Doubtless suspicious about the dashing courtier’s relationship with his wife, and likely thinking that he could at any rate get some useful information about her from Wyatt, Henry had the poet put into the Tower of London, accused of an affair with her.  From his cell, Wyatt probably witnessed Boleyn’s death and must have felt that his own survival was again in doubt. 

     Surely shaken by this experience, Wyatt stayed out of trouble for a time, but in a few years he was again arrested and himself charged with treason.  The poet’s charm may have saved his life, as the current queen consort Catherine Howard intervened on his behalf and obtained his release with the condition that he must reconcile with his wife.  It was not long before Howard in her turn was led to the executioner’s block.   After her death, it was whispered that the king had his eye on Wyatt’s wife, but, as it happened, Wyatt died of natural causes shortly thereafter.  (His sole legitimate son, Thomas Wyatt the Younger, was executed under Queen Mary.)

     Though Wyatt managed to avoid the headsman, the other poet credited with introducing sonnets to the English language (and the originator of the English or Shakespearean sonnet rhyme pattern) the contentious Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, did not.  The poet, well aware of the dangers of royal service as a first cousin of both Boleyn and Howard, was made Lieutenant General of the King on Sea and Land and fought in France.

    His pride and temper were as well-known as his gallantry under fire.  Though he (and his father as well) had taken the crown’s part in opposing the Lincolnshire rebels who had taken up arms against the dissolution of the monasteries, a fellow courtier suggested that he had been in fact sympathetic to their cause.  Offended, Surrey struck the man in the park at Hampton Court and was imprisoned for breaking the peace in the king’s domain. 

     After his release he was for a time absent from court but he returned to royal favor after a few years.  In 1543 he was accused by the Privy Council of a nighttime adventure in which he (in company with Wyatt and others) broke windows of London homes using a sort of crossbow that could hurl stones in what must have been a drunken revel, and a second charge – eating meat during Lent – was added.  Once again, his friends were able to secure his release.  In “A Satire on London” he makes the unlikely claim that his disorderly actions were meant to awaken the citizens to their sins. 

    The poet’s ego, however, led eventually to his downfall.  Though immensely proud of his descent from the Plantagenets, he and his family had long been loyal to Henry and the Tudors.  As the king aged, afflicted by health problems, he became increasingly suspicious that Surrey meant to usurp the throne from his son, the future Edward VI.  When Surrey’s sister, Mary FitzRoy, widow of Henry’s illegitimate son, was to be married to Jane’s brother Thomas Seymour with the blessings of her father and of the king, she and Surrey objected and the match was called off.  According to her statements, Surrey then tried to persuade her to seduce the king, suggesting that she might as a palace mistress "wield as much influence on him as Madame d'Etampes doth about the French King."  In response, she flatly declared that she “would sooner cut her own throat.”

     With the tensions over succession rising, in 1546 at Kenninghall Surrey chose to include on his quartered shield (quartering allowed more visible connections to highly placed lines of descent) the arms of Edward the Confessor.  In spite of the fact that the rules of heraldry allowed this usage and that Surrey had collared the leopards in the royal arms and placed them in the secondary quarter of his shield, he was arrested on the excuse that he had symbolically indicated his own ambitions on the throne.  Once he was prisoner, he was questioned not about his arms but only about his attempted use of his sister as an informer, his supposed plans to depose Henry, claims of his heterodoxy, and his preparations to leave the country.  He mounted a full defense of his innocence, yet was executed.  His father would have been beheaded as well had Henry VII not died whereupon the Privy Council removed the death penalty but seized his lands and kept him locked up for years.  

     Another of the group known as the “silver poets” for their eloquence was Sir Walter Ralegh, whose name is known in this hemisphere for his role in early colonization.  He campaigned in France for the Huguenots, and for his service in suppressing the Irish received considerable estates there, but he had little success in inducing English tenants to emigrate.  He turned his attention to the New World, sponsoring the failed settlement that became known as the Lost Colony of Roanoke.   Dubious about his ability to fund settlements that, beyond being self-supporting, could make him rich, he set out to find El Dorado in South America but there too had little success. 

    A few years before his South American venture, he had impregnated and secretly married one of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting.  When their relationship was discovered, he and his wife were sent to the Tower.  He was temporarily released to oversee the spoils of a ship captured from Spain, but then returned to the Tower, only to be again set free and assume a seat in Parliament.  His influence rose once more, though he was accused (and acquitted) of atheistic views.  He fought to capture Cadiz, to repel the Armada, and became governor of the Isle of Jersey.

     Yet, with the demise of Queen Elizabeth, his loyalty to James was suspected, and he was arrested for involvement in the “Main Plot” to replace James with Lady Arbella Stuart.  The evidence was slight, and Ralegh claimed he could exonerate himself if he were allowed to question his friend the Baron Cobham, the main witness against him, but this was not allowed and he was incarcerated for thirteen years during which he worked on his Historie of the World.  Even in this scholarly enterprise he attracted the doubts of the king who found the book "too sawcie in censuring Princes."

     He was freed in 1617 after thirteen years confinement to lead another expedition to South America during which men commanded by his friend Lawrence Kemys attacked the Spanish outpost of Santo Tomé de Guayana in violation of the Anglo-Spanish treaty and Ralegh’s instructions.  In this conflict his son Walter was killed and Ralegh was arrested when he returned, having spurned chances to flee into exile.  The Spanish demanded his execution, and he was beheaded.  (His subordinate Kemys committed suicide.)

     A sonneteer might encounter all manner of other calamities.  Virtually every biography includes episodes of violence of harsh legal judgements.  The account of all these tumultuous events would be voluminous.  Some are entertaining enough to seem as though written for the stage.  Attorney and Parliamentarian as well as sonneteer, John Davies was disbarred for attacking a colleague with a cudgel upon which he promptly repaired to Oxford for the next year where he devoted himself to literature.  He was later made attorney-general of Ireland.  In 1613 he was the king’s candidate for speaker of the Irish Parliament but was opposed by the Catholic members who instead proposed Sir John Everard.  The dispute led to an absurd scene in which Everard seized the speaker’s chair, refusing to vacate it until Davies’ supporters carried the stout poet and placed him on Everard’s lap.  Edmund Spenser, who wrote the Petrarchan Amoretti, was also an Irish landlord whose castle in North Cork was taken and burned by rebels after which the writer died in London “for want of bread,” according to Ben Jonson (though this statement is surely inaccurate).  Politics also made Henry Constable a convict, largely over his urging of toleration of Catholics.  The prolific Samuel Daniel was praised for his sequence of love sonnets Delia but called before the Privy Council for supposedly seditious implications of his play The Tragedy of Philotas.

     Several were at least suspected of common crimes including murder.  Barnabe Barnes, who wrote a sequence called Parthenophil and Parthenophe (Virgin-lover and Virgin-voiced), engaged in ferocious pamphleteering polemics and was tried for attempting to poison a man, though he escaped custody and was never recaptured, doubtless due to the influence of powerful friends.  The prolific George Gascoigne who came between Wyatt and Surrey, was a noble soldier when taken prisoner during the Siege of Leiden, but a common criminal as well, arrested more than once for debts and apparently also for attempted murder.  He had served in Parliament, but in a re-election bid was disqualified as a man not only “noted for manslaughter" but also "a common Rymer.”  A poet might also be a crime victim.  Fulke Greville, a protégé of Sidney, was stabbed by a servant.  His learned physicians filled the wound with pig fat and he died a lingering death.  A number of writers, including William Percy, the writer of Sonnets to Coelia, and the middle-class Henry Lok who wrote religious sonnets were imprisoned simply for debt.

     A few years later after the tumultuous careers of these poets Hobbes was to describe human life in general as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” characterized by “continual fear, and danger of violent death.”  While everyone half a millennium ago suffered equally from the lack of effective medical knowledge and the draconian, often arbitrary, legal system, and the poor contended with a constant fear of malnutrition, belonging to the power elite was no guarantee of longevity.  Those at the top faced the perils of war, but combat was hardly a greater threat to them than their own monarch’s disfavor.  Perhaps the beauties of their poetry, and the sonnet during this period became one of the most subtle and expressive forms in all of literature, far from conflicting with a hazardous life, proved the best response to uncertainty and danger.  Many of us who are far from courtiers in the great chain  of being have found that, for us as well as them, love and art can make an otherwise intolerable life worth living.