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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subjectsSkeltons, rejoinder, Lily, impotent, satirist, against the Scottes, 1513, James IV, Scotland, orator regius

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73

Skelton’s rejoinder that Lily is an impotent, blunt toothed aggressor anticipate the dispute between the late-Elizabethan satirists John Marston and Joseph Hall suggesting that they shared not only the notion that satire should be antisocially dialogic but also an understanding of what the points of contention ought to be (see p.79).

Lily complains that Skelton has dismissed his attacks upon Whittinton as lacking satirical spirit and invective punch, and rejoins that the ability to project such satirical maliciousness is an unreliable measure of disputative aptitude: “Quid me Sceltone fronte sic aperta/ Carpis, vipereo potens veneno?/ Quid versus trutina meas iniqua/ Libras?” (With face so bold, and teeth so sharp/ Of vipers venom, why dost carp?/ Why are my verses by thee weigh’d/ in a false scale?”, ll.1-4). His unrestrained vituperation reveals that “Doctrinan nec habes, nec es Poeta” (he is “Neither learned, nor a Poet”), Lily contends (l.8).

Skelton’s freelance satirical persona achieves its most pronounced manifestation in his highly controversial postscript to his satirical flyting ‘Skelton Laureate against the Scottes’ (1513) in which he defends himself against “Diuers People that Remord This Rymynge agaynst the Scot Jemmy” and continues unrepentantly to malign James IV of Scotland as an “vntrue rebell”, “heretyke” and “excomunycate” (l.19, l.28 and l.30). ‘Against the Scottes’ is a more vitriolic version of his Ballade of the Scottysshe Kynge that appears to have been redrafted when news reached him of James’s death and of the full extent of the victory at Flodden under the leadership of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. 138 The initial poem had been composed while Skelton was accompanying Henry’s army in France in 1513, and the orator regius may have been there in the capacity of a court propagandist or

138 A Ballade of the Scottysshe Kynge (R. Faques, 1513), STC 22593. Details relating to the background of these poems are given by Nelson (1964), pp.127-35 and Pollet (1971), pp.66-76.



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