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ABSTRACT
MASSEY, LARA BELL. A “fitter” Text of John Donne’s “The Good Morrow.” (Under the Direction of M. Thomas Hester.)
The purpose of this paper has been to explain the process by which I established the text of John Donne’s “The Good Morrow.” In order to construct the text I examined the forty manuscripts and seven seventeenth-century editions that contain part or all of the poem, and I transcribed the poem from each source. Then I collated the transcriptions using a computer software program called the Donne Variorum Collation Program. I filiated the manuscripts based on verbal variants and, through investigation and comparison, created a schema of the poem’s transmissional history. I deduced that Donne made minor revisions to the original “The Good Morrow,” and I conservatively emended the version of “The Good Morrow” in the Dolau Cothi manuscript, the closest manuscript to Donne’s Lost Revised Holograph, and presented that copy-text for “The Good Morrow.” I presented a modernized version of the text also. In addition to a detailed explanation of this process, I also included a complete listing of variants, the transmissional schema of the poem, and an explanation of how this work fits into the context of contemporary Donne studies and modern editorial practices.
A “fitter” Text of John Donne’s “The Good Morrow”
by Lara Bell Massey
A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty ofNorth Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts ENGLISH
Raleigh 2002
APPROVED BY:
Dr. Robert V. Young, Advisor Dr. Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Advisor
Dr. M. Thomas Hester, Chair of Advisory Committee
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have been so blessed by the assistance and support of the following people that “thanks” seems hardly adequate. I wish to thank my family and my friends, especially my Dad, Mark, and Ed for your unfailing support during my career move and for always saying yes when I asked you to read a draft “just one more time.” Thank you also to Ernie Sullivan, Syd Conner, and especially Gary Stringer of the Donne Variorum, without whom this project never could have been completed. In addition, I owe much gratitude to my friends in the North Carolina State University English Department, including my fellow graduate student Tracy McLawhorn, my thesis committee representatives R. V. Young and Kirsten Shepherd- Barr, and Brian Blackley: an outstanding instructor and a supportive friend. And last but certainly not least I cannot say thank you enough to Tom Hester who has been my professor, my boss, my thesis committee director, my mentor, and my friend. He pushed me hard to excel, but he also always had a word of encouragement when he could tell that I was beginning to feel overwhelmed. This thesis and my career thus far have resulted in many ways from the faith he has placed in me, and I hope to continue to make my “second dad” proud in Maryland. To all of you, thank you.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page I ……………………………………………………………....……… 1 II ……………………………………………………………................ 4 Presentation of Copy-Text ……………………………………................ 9 Presentation of Modernized Version of Text ……………………....……… 10 III ……………………………………………………………................ 11 IV ……………………………………………………………................ 32 V ……………………………………………………………................ 34 VI ……………………………………………………………................ 50 Works Cited ……………………………………………………................ 57
modern editors are faced with the task of examining the few extant manuscripts and printed editions in order to ascertain the closest readings to Shakespeare and other Renaissance dramatists’ original intentions. These dramatic issues extend into Renaissance poetry as well. Just as playwrights seldom thought their plays worthy of collecting, many poets also lacked the desire for ownership over their work, leaving a shortage of holographs and few authorized printed versions. In addition, Renaissance literature was undergoing the transition from a manuscript culture to a print culture, in much the same way that the modern era is evolving from a print to an on-line and multimedia culture. Just as some are hesitant to read Milton on a computer screen instead of having Paradise Lost in their hands, many during the Renaissance preferred to write out their work in manuscripts and to read from them. Although the printing press had existed for quite some time, the change was gradual, and occasionally the typesetters were no more cautious or accurate than the scribes. In addition, many poets not only did not intend for their work to be printed but tried very hard to keep their work from being printed. Many poets wrote lyrics that were considered controversial—spiritually, politically, or sexually—simply to pass amongst their court coterie, recognizing that the public display of these poems could carry significant consequences.^2 One such Renaissance poet was John Donne, a man who once labeled himself “two authors”: a young Catholic recusant, “Jack” Donne, who wrote bawdy and bold lyrics, and the older “Doctor” Donne who wrote intense spiritual works. While this over-simplified classification does little justice to the intertwined images of worldly love and spiritual love
(^2) Such issues surrounding scribal practices are further analyzed by Harold Love in Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England Donne and His Modern Editors.” and by Ted-Larry Pebworth in “Manuscript Poems and Print Assumptions:
present throughout Donne’s work, one easily can understand how the circulation of such bawdy poems as “The Flea” or such politically charged poems as Metempsychosis after Donne’s ordination could pose great danger to his reputation as a spiritual leader, and possibly even to his life.^3 For whatever reason, Donne chose not to publish a collection of his poems.^4 Donne did not even collect his own poems, as evident by his need to inquire in a letter to his friend Henry Goodyer for the “old book” containing copies of the poems when Donne sought them; apparently, Donne planned at one time to publish a volume of his poems “not for much publique view, but at mine own cost…as a valediction to the world, before I take Orders,” but he never actually printed the volume ( Letters 197). Although Donne did allow his two Anniversaries to be printed, he later chastised himself in a letter to George Garrard: “I…do not pardon my self” for having “descended to print anything in verse” ( Letters 238). Donne was probably quite careful about who saw the poems and possibly even sought their destruction. Modern editors are left, in fact, with only one known holograph of a Donne poem, a verse epistle addressed to the Lady Carey and Mrs. Essex Riche. For all other poems, editors must gather copies, most of which contain either minor or significant variants, scattered throughout a multitude of scribal manuscripts and seventeenth-century printed editions in order to construct the poetry of this major Renaissance author (Stringer et al Elegies XLIX-L). The goal of this study is to establish the text of one such poem: “The Good Morrow,” and to explain the process of that endeavor. Donne’s “The Good Morrow” is a twenty-one
(^3) Ernest Sullivan analyzes these issues further in “Who Was Reading/Writing Donne Verse in the Seventeenth Century?”. (^4) No printed editions were issued until after Donne’s death.
available manuscripts when establishing copy-texts, usually establishing their texts as a conglomeration of the existing manuscript versions and noting variants among them. Although many of these editors made extensive fine use of the known manuscripts at the time, not until the 1980 publication of Peter Beal’s Index of English Literary Manuscripts was the complete listing of Donne’s poems contained in all known manuscripts available, allowing for manuscript material never incorporated into modern editions to be included and strengthening the growing call for a new edition of Donne’s poetry (Stringer et al Elegies XLV). This call has been answered by a group of Donne scholars who first gathered in 1981 to begin a variorum edition of Donne’s work, an edition aimed at being inclusive, thorough, and current. The contents of this Variorum project have been broken into eight separate volumes, three of which have been published at this time. According to the Donne Variorum general editors the goal of the textual work is “to recover and present exactly what Donne wrote” (XLIX), although they certainly recognize the obvious challenges of such an undertaking. Although there are some available materials in Donne’s hand, including approximately forty prose letters, there remains only one holograph of a Donne poem; the remainder survive only in non-authorial copies which amount to over 5000 transcriptions of poems, all “at indeterminate degrees of remove from holograph and therefore of indeterminate authority” (XLIX). This lack of evidence from which scholarly editors can derive Donne’s poetic intention extends past the texts of the individual poems to their possible sequence and even to what works should be admitted to the canon at all. Thus, with 239 manuscript sources and over 200 seventeenth-century books, including diaries, miscellanies, and commonplace books, that contain Donne poems or excerpts, in addition to
the seven printed editions of Donne’s poetry, editors face the task of sifting through evidence to establish the transmissional history of the poems so as to work their way back to the versions most similar to Donne’s original intentions. Seeking out “Donne’s original intentions” could seem to many modern literary scholars a pointless task, one that cannot and should not be attempted. However, neither the Donne Variorum editors nor I claim to understand the effect Donne “intended” for his poem to have on its readers, and the emphasis of my study certainly is not to figure out Donne’s “intentions” in that sense. The term “intention” has been contentious since long before the publication of Wimsatt and Beardsley’s “Intentional Fallacy” but certainly has been drawn to the forefront of scholarly debate since then, and, as Annabel Patterson concludes in her essay on the term in Critical Terms for Literary Study , a main source of this controversy regarding “intention” is that literary scholars maintain slightly different definitions for the term. Thus, in order to avoid confusion, when I refer to Donne’s “intended work” in this study, I “intend” simply to refer to Donne’s original wording—the words that constituted the poem as he wrote it. I am not addressing issues of reader response or affect. This M. A. project involves examining all extant evidence to recover the precise words that Donne “intended” to make up his poem “The Good Morrow.” For this M. A. project, I have followed the method of the Variorum editors, aiming to examine all of the available artifacts of “The Good Morrow,” to compare them using computer software (the Donne Variorum Collation Program) so as to choose the copy-text that appears to be closest to Donne’s intention, and then to make the minimal editorial interventions. In most cases the Variorum editors have chosen their copy-texts from manuscript versions, which are more likely to reflect accurately the original holographs due
correcting those few clear errors provides a reading that probably is much closer to Donne’s intention. As the Variorum editors point out, “except by extreme good fortune, we are not likely to present any non-holographic poem exactly as Donne wrote it, but this approach does allow us to present a text of every poem essentially free of conjecture and anachronistic intervention” (LIII). Thus the theory of the Variorum editors instructs one to emend the texts minimally so as to present the closest versions possible to Donne’s original poems. I have followed this course in establishing the following copy-text of “The Good Morrow”—which is derived from the Dolau Cothi manuscript for reasons that will be explained later—and my modernized version of his poem.
Copy-text:
The Good Morrowe I wonder by my troth, what thou and I, Did till wee lou'd; were wee not weand till then? But suckt on Countrye pleasures Childishly?Or snorted wee in the Seauen sleepers den? Twas soe; But this all pleasures fancies bee If euer anie Beawtye I did see Which I desird, and gott, twas but a Dreame of thee. And now Good morrowe to our wakinge soules Which watch not one another out of feare For loue all loue of other sights controules, And makes one littell roome an euerie where.Let Sea discouerers to new worlds haue gone, Let Maps to others, worlds on worlds haue showne Let vs posses our world: each hath one, and is one. My face in thine eye, Thine in myne appearesAnd true plaine harts, doe in the faces rest Where can wee finde two fitter Hemispheres Without sharpe North, without declyninge west; What ever dies was not mixt equallye: If our two loues bee one, or thou and ILoue soe alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.
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I began the process of establishing this text of “The Good Morrow” by transcribing the seven seventeenth-century printed editions and all forty manuscripts that contain part or all of the poem. The manuscript copies were collected from microfilm of the originals except when access to the microfilm was not possible, in which cases photocopies of microfilm were substituted. Although some copies were easier to read than others and certainly transcribing from the original manuscripts would have been ideal, all versions were clear enough to establish accurate transcriptions. Most manuscripts contain all twenty-one lines, but some have as few as five. Not surprisingly, the spelling and punctuation vary, as do the inclusion of titles and subscripts, as well as decorative scribal flourishes. There also are many scribal strike-throughs, insertions, and corrections, usually marked by the original scribe but sometimes by other scribes after composition. Following is an example of one manuscript version of the poem and a transcription of this version (in the format of the Donne Variorum Collation Program). This particular manuscript version is found in folio 118 of the Narcissus Luttrell manuscript, abbreviated as C9 by the Variorum editors, with “C” representing its location in the Cambridge University Library. This manuscript contains one of the most legible versions of the poem, one that provides examples of several of the paleographic conventions of the time, such as the interchangeable “u” and “v” and the absence of the letter “j”; the last line of this sample includes the word “iust” instead of “just” as do many of the other manuscripts. Also, “e” is arbitrarily added to the ends of words, such as “sillilye” and “denne,” which also contains the doubling of “n,” another common Renaissance convention. The abbreviation “or” in line 8, with the common superscript “r,” does not represent “or” but “our”; abbreviating this word as
such was quite common, as was “w ch^ ” for “which.” This sample provides an instructive example of how little spelling should be taken into account when establishing Renaissance texts, for the scribes simply lacked modern spelling conventions. There also was no standard method for punctuating; some scribes hardly punctuated at all, assuming that the end of a line provided enough of a pause so that no other mark was needed. Each scribe maintained a unique style of spelling, capitalizing, and punctuating. Thus, while examining these differences is important investigative work that can provide support for theories of transmission developed through verbal variants, lending them too much credence can be dangerous, for the variant words themselves provide much more information about the poem’s history.
Transcription of Luttrell ms., f. 118: IDENTILIN$$ X032C09 | Luttrell ms. | ff. 118 | pp. na \ E:LBM\x\5-16-02032.C09.HE1om 032.C09.001 I wonder by my troth what thou & I 032.C09.002 Did till we lou'd, were we not weand till then? 032.C09.003 But suckd on childish pleasure sillilye 032.C09.004 or snorted wee in the 7 sleepers denne032.C09.005 Twas so. But this, all pleasures fancies bee 032.C09.006 If euer any beauty I did see 032.C09.007 which I desird & gott, 'twas but a dreame of thee. 032.C09.008 And now good morrow to o%5r%6 waking soules 032.C09.009 which watch not one another SCRIBAL DELETION >out< of feare032.C09.010 ffor Loue all loue of others sights controlls 032.C09.011 And makes one little roome an euery where 032.C09.012 Let Sea-discouerers to new worlds haue gon 032.C09.013 Lett mapps to others worlds SCRIBAL DELETION on worlde haue showne032.C09.014 Lett vs possesse o%5r%6 world, each hath one, & is one. 032.C09.015 My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares 032.C09.016 And true plaine hearts do in y%5e%6 faces rest 032.C09.017 where can we find two fitter Hemispheres 032.C09.018 without sharp north, without declyning west032.C09.019 what euer dyes was not mixt equally 032.C09.020 If our two loues be one, both thou & I 032.C09.021 Loue iust alike in all, none of these loues can dye. 032.C09.0SSom 032.C09.0$$ 3 7-line sts; ind. lns. 2,4,9,11,16,18; ind. more lns. 5-6,12-13,19-20; scribalsymbol centered where title would be; "out" written to side of line 9
A computer file like the previous example was created for each of the manuscript and printed versions of “The Good Morrow.” Each version contains an introductory line that provides general information about the copy being transcribed, a heading line (listed as “om” if the heading was omitted from that version), the 21 line body of the poem, 7 a subscription if one exists, and an explanatory line of the indentation pattern and of other unique features of the poem. Only through creating these completely consistent files could they be examined against one another by the Donne Variorum Collation Program so as to provide a listing of the variants among the versions. At this point in the process, a copy-text had to be chosen at random for each collation so that the poems could be contrasted with some particular version of the text. However, the goal of running the collations is to reach an understanding of the poem’s history, thus enabling the editor to determine the most qualified copy-text, or “what seems to be the earliest, least-corrupted state of the text as preserved in the best witness among the artifacts in which it appears” (Stringer et al LIV), to emend it as little as possible to prevent misreading, and then to compare all of the manuscripts and printed editions with that copy- text to establish the listing of variants. Following are two example pages from the final collation of “The Good Morrow,” those representing lines 1 and 17. In general, the collations contain line-by-line comparisons. The top line is the copy-text (or prior to the final collation whatever text has been arbitrarily chosen as the copy-text) line, and the same line from all other manuscripts and printed
(^7) If a line is missing from the poem, it also is listed as “om.” Because the Donne Variorum Collation Program examines character strings, the format of all poems must be identical so that the proper words and lines can becompared. Thus the general framework for each file is consistent with this example.
