early-Stuart society, proclamations, sedition, James I, orthodoxy, conventional, collaboration, courtly, flyting

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is apparent that the answer-poem is a pronounced medium through which of personas of good repute are cultivated and advertised in Tudor and early-Stuart society. The successful cultivation of a positive self-image requires keeping within parameters appropriate to circumstance and conventional wisdom. It is, in essence, a display of orthodoxy. This is perhaps most obvious when poets get it wrong; such as when James I fails to follow the conventions of proclamations against sedition or when Skelton neglects to tow the line of royal policy in his ‘Against the Scottes’.

This impulse for self-display should be understood not only in terms of the response, but also in terms of the urge of poets to secure responses to their work, whether, like Donne, they make direct requests through epistolary communication, or use strategies of provocation intended to incite responses, as in the case of Ralegh’s ‘The Lie’. There might also be an element of prearrangement; as seems to be the case for Googe’s verse exchanges with his friends or in some domestic, courtly flytings. In fact, it is probable that the successful solicitation of an answer and the cultivation of poetic dialogue between peers were both seen as being just as indicative of poetic accomplishment as efficacious riposte. The extent to which such skills might be cultivated is perhaps reflected by several of the initiating poems I have examined which show evidence of a highly attuned ability to gauge accurately what Taavitsainen and Jucker refer to as the “perlocutionary effect” of their verses or, in other words, the control they manage to exert over the sort of poetic reactions they provoke. ⁴⁴⁵ As I have shown, there is evidence that Harington’s ‘Of a Certain Preacher’ and Donne’s ‘Here’s no more newes’ are pronounced examples of such aptitude.

Simultaneously, exchanged verses often exhibit some degree of collaboration between

⁴⁴⁴ See, for instance, Livingston (1991), p.796.
⁴⁴⁵ Taavitsainen and Jucker (2000), p.72.

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