culture and rhetoric of the answer poem 1485-1626

The Culture and Rhetoric of the Answer Poem: 1485-1626

SECTION 1: POLEMIC: FLYTING, LIBEL AND SATIRE

Chapter 1: Responses to Libel and Satire

  1. The Verse Libel
    1. A Sociological Perspective
    2. Verbal Duelling
    3. Proclamatory Answers
  2. The Verse Satire
    1. Self Publicising Tudor Satirists
    2. John Skelton
    3. John Marston

Chapter 2: Domestic and Cross-Cultural Flyting

  1. Cross-Cultural Flyting
    1. Anglo-French Flyting
    2. Anglo-Scottish Flyting
  2. Domestic Flyting
    1. John Skelton and Christopher Garnish
    2. Thomas Smyth and William Gray
    3. Thomas Churchyard and Thomas Camel
    4. John Taylor and William Fennor

SECTION 2: MARRIAGE, FRIENDSHIP COURTSHIP/COURTIERSHIP

Chapter 3: Answer Poetry and Marriage: 1550-1570

  1. Pros and Cons of Marriage
  2. Duties of Husbands and Wives

Chapter 4: Late Tudor Amicable Verse Exchanges

  1. Barnabe Googe
  2. Isabella Whitney
  3. John Donne

Chapter 5: Women's answer-poetry and the female-voiced response

  1. Henrician Answer Poetry
  2. Late Elizabethan and Jacobean Answer Poetry
    1. Elizabeth I
    2. Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
    3. Lady Mary Cheke
    4. Lady Mary Wroth



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subjectsElizabeth I, James I, Lady Willoughby, introspective, soliloquy, subjects, falsehood

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59

persons, who in fauour of the sayd Sc. Q. […] sought to interrupt the quiet of the Realme”. 109 Like James, Elizabeth suggests she possesses perception, reason and wisdom superior to that of her subjects but manages this in a way that does not alienate them. Unlike James she does not address her subjects directly and the verse takes the form of an introspective soliloquy in which she enlists empathy by reflecting upon her vulnerability, as much as upon her heightened insight into her subjects’ minds as God’s elected representative on earth: “And wit me warns to shun such snares/ As threatens mine annoy./ For falsehood now doth flow/ And subjects’ faith doth ebb” (ll.3-6). She is also careful to distinguish between the “aspiring minds” of her bad subjects, and loyal “worthy wights”, thereby allowing readers to identify themselves with the good (l.10 and l.19).

The means by which the poem apparently reached circulation also reveals Elizabeth to be a competent manipulator of her own propaganda. It is supposed to have been copied and circulated illicitly by Elizabeth’s attendant and intimate, Lady Willoughby. May interprets Willoughby’s actions as having been stage-managed deliberately by the queen:

The “unauthorized” circulation of her verses on the rebellion constitutes a ruse [that was] carefully orchestrated. […] Patriotism was encouraged and Mary condemned in a way Elizabeth could not officially attempt without risking serious diplomatic repercussions. 110


If this scenario was indeed staged, then it seems that Elizabeth avoided purposely the exposure of addressing dissenters directly, as well as the reason May mentions of avoiding antagonising Catholic nations on the continent by condemning Mary publicly. Rather than arranging for, or encouraging, one of her subjects to answer upon her behalf, she distances herself from this poetic statement by disowning responsibility for its dissemination from the private to the public

Elizabeth’s poem as an alternative to “open proclamation” (pp.407-8).
109 Puttenham (repr. 1968), p.207.
110 May (1999), p.48.



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