Tottels Miscellany, John Harington, Arundel Harington Manuscript, Isabell Markham, Paul, biblical authority

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explained similarly by the gender of the audiences that they envisage. In the first pair from Tottel’s Miscellany (‘Against Women either Good or Badde’, no. 257 and ‘An Answere’, no. 258) it is argued in the answer that women lack responsibility for their own conduct, and therefore that paternal authority must be exercised over them to the utmost extent. In contrast, John Harington’s translations, “If dutie wyf leade the to deeme” and its answer, beginning “Husband, yf you will be my deare” from the Arundel Harington Manuscript, depict a process of bargaining between a husband and wife as they formulate a marital covenant which establishes their respective obligations and responsibilities within the relationship. ³⁰⁷ It was perhaps the liberality and balance of these poems that motivated Harington to translate them for the attention of his wife, Isabell Markham. ³⁰⁸ In contrast, the Tottel poems offer an exclusively male perspective, appear to envisage a male audience and debate the efficacy of husbands’ supervision of their wives.

In their formal structuring these two pairs follow similar, but inverse, trajectories and the contrasting emphases they place upon classical and biblical authority is used in each case to determine the stringency with which women require paternal supervision. The antecedent of the Tottel pair opens with a classical authority for women’s inherent wickedness, while the answer closes with a prayer to God, asking for the fortitude and strength necessary to manage wives’ spiritual welfare and supervise their conduct. In contrast, the first of Harington’s poems opens by paraphrasing Paul’s paternalistic injunction while his answer closes with a classical precedent suggestive of a greater degree of mutual assistance and reciprocal governance inhering within the relationship. The

³⁰⁷ Hughey ed. (1960), I. pp.95-6 and II. pp.30-1.
³⁰⁸ Harington had previously explored his relationship with Isabell in another verse dialogue; a question and answer sequence in which he depicts Isabell answering in kind his declarations of love and affection for her (see H 148).

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