courtly, decorum, Puttenham, metapoetic, Castiglione, meteorological, allegory, amorous, epithet, poetic

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implies mutual understanding and an established intellectual rapport. Even the casual reader suspects immediately that the context of the exchange is amorous since the lover’s poem discloses its meaning through the suggestiveness of the opening epithet: “Louely Lady”. In this way the opening poem conforms to the standard of courtly decorum prescribed by Castiglione and to that of poetic decorum set out by Puttenham. Daniel Javitch’s work on the relationship between these two texts highlights the importance of suggestive dissimulation to both courtly and poetic display. As he points out, both writers stipulate that the decorous courtier and accomplished poet respectively ought to display their duplicity and thus avoid making their meaning impenetrable. ³⁸⁰ For Puttenham the standards of courtly and poetic excellence, as measured by the ability to dissimulate, are inseparable. Poetic propriety is the direct consequence of courtly decorum, or as Javitch phrases it, for Puttenham, “to be a good poet entails being a proper courtier”. ³⁸¹

Ringler cites another instance of such cautionary ambiguity in which the lover’s meaning is embedded in acrostics. The opening poem (beginning “When shall thie cruell scornes be past”) is presented as a meteorological allegory and is met with an equally circumspect extended weather metaphor from his lady (beginning “When stormes be past then caumes be nexte”). Their meaning is clarified in a secondary exchange deployed in

³⁸⁰ As Javitch (1978) points out Puttenham’s figures of Emphasis and Liptote are both described as being obliquely suggestive. In the former meaning is implied and in the latter the context is purported rather than expressed, pp.58-9.

³⁸¹ Javitch (1978), p.50.

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