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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subjectsBallade of the Scottysshe Kynge, James IV, Harleian, Against the Scottes, Skelton

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74

patriotic flyter. As Nelson has noticed, the Ballade of the Scottysshe Kynge “corresponds closely” in places with Henry’s indignant answer to James IV’s messenger who summoned him to leave France under threat of attack from the Scots, as it is recorded in BL Harleian MS. 2252. 139 Thus far Skelton presents himself as Henry’s royally-appointed flyter and mouthpiece who has official sanction to reiterate and proclaim Henry’s words.

Presumably, Skelton’s official role would have ended with the termination of military hostilities and in ‘Against the Scottes’ he is clinging to a defunct office. Moreover, his heightened malevolence in this poem runs contrary to the changed feeling towards James at court where there was much sympathy for him following his death on the battlefield, and he expresses inappropriate satisfaction at the death of an anointed king. In a section reflecting upon “When the Scotte Lyued’, Skelton even seems to imagine James being driven to Hell by the banging of pots and pans in a sort of divine skimmington when he issues the curse, “Chryst sence you with a frying pan!” (l.62). Thomas More, in an epitaph upon the Scottish king, gauges more accurately the attitude toward James at the English court, describing him as “regno hostis amico/ Fortis et infelix” (“brave and ill-starred enemy of a friendly power”, Epigram 166, ll.1-2). More’s James is a sympathetic, repentant figure who offers himself as a moral exemplum against betrayal: “Quanta animi fuerat fidei uis tanta fuisset,/ Caetera contigerant non inhonesta mihi” (“Had my loyalty been equal to my courage, the sequel with its shame for me would not have happened”, ll.3-4). In fact, when More’s James addresses “chattering Infamy”, hoping that “you may be willing to keep silent” (“Garrulaque O utinam fama tacere uelis”, l.6), it is tempting to believe that he had Skelton’s diatribe in mind, and that the humanist may even be one of the “Diuers

139 Nelson (1964), pp.129-30. Nelson also observes correspondences between Skelton’s poem and Henry’s formal epistolary response to James’s summons, pp.132-3.



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