This thesis investigates the textual culture of early modern Scotland, as evident from three literary miscellany manuscripts produced and circulated in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. Each of the main three chapters will consider one miscellany manuscript in its complex totality, dealing with questions of provenance, ownership, editorial history, literary analysis, and an assessment of the manuscript in its wider cultural context. Manuscript transcriptions are appended, particularly since the contents of two out of three of the miscellanies discussed here have never been printed. Chapter One, by way of introduction, considers the current state of manuscript research in Scotland, and the implications for Scottish studies of book-historical methodologies. ‘Histories of the Book’ are currently being written across Europe (and further afield), and Scotland forms no exception. Against this backdrop, Chapter One evaluates recent critical work on early modern Scottish textual culture, and the extent to which book-historical narratives, developed in relation to medieval and renaissance English literature, can be applied to Scottish writing. More specifically, this chapter locates the miscellany manuscript as a prime site of investigation for scribal culture. The first miscellany under investigation, in Chapter Two, is Edinburgh University Library MS Laing III.447. For the largest part, the content of this manuscript has been printed, as a supplementary volume to the works of Alexander Montgomerie. This print is problematic in many respects, however, since it reorganised the entire content, and removed from its immediate context the longest poem of the manuscript, Montgomerie’s The Cherrie and the Slae. The appended transcription restores the original order. Chapter Two will investigate the contributions of the many scribes that were responsible for the manuscript, and examine whether any thematic coherence may be detected. Chapter Three deals with Cambridge University Library MS Kk.5.30, a hybrid manuscript that contains two sections. Section one (dating to the late-fifteenth, early-sixteenth century) features a transcription of John Lydgate’s Middle English Troy Book; section two consists of a later supply (c. 1612) by James Murray of Tibbermuir, containing additions to the Troy Book and twenty-seven miscellaneous poems. Though this latter section will be the main focus of the chapter, the manuscript’s other section, and thus its hybridity, will not be ignored. The third and final miscellany to be discussed is National Library of Scotland MS 15937. Containing approximately 175 items (many of which from English sources), this is the most expansive of the three manuscripts considered here. MS 15937 is textually a problematic source, since it is a nineteenth-century transcript of a lost original, the latter compiled by Margaret Robertson of Lude around 1630. This miscellany is an important witness also in musical terms, since it collects the words to a significant amount of Scottish and English songs, many of them unique to the manuscript. All chapters will stress the highly idiosyncratic nature of the miscellanies, but also, where possible, establish common ground between them, and connect them to other Scottish and English manuscripts and printed books. In all their complexity, the miscellanies reveal a literary culture whose nature undermines the monolithic and court-centred history that has been so prevalent in literary criticism (though the court, and courtly writing, are important backgrounds to a great deal of the poetry contained in the manuscripts). Finally, as underlined in the concluding Chapter Five, EUL Laing III.447, CUL MS Kk.5.30, and NLS MS 15937 are important collections both for the preservation, and for evidence about the dissemination, of Scottish and English verse.

The primary objective of this thesis is to examine the interaction between drama and politics in Ben Jonson's two surviving tragedies, Sejanus and Catiline, during the early years of the Jacobean and Restoration periods. Jonson relied heavily on classical scholarship in writing his two extant tragedies, his stated reason being to convince the readers of their "truth of Argument". But Jonson, nevertheless, adapted his sources in an ingenious way that both suited his dramatic purposes and served to cast light on social and political realities in the England of his own day. For Jonson, as for many Renaissance historians, the past had meaning primarily because of its valuable lessons for the present and the future. Thus, one of my aims is to examine both the nature and the extent of Jonson's dependenceo n the classical sources which provided him with the historical stories and details that he dramatized in the two plays. SuccessiveE nglish governmentsi n the seventeenthc entury treated drama, especially that based on historical material, as a potentially dangerous medium for disseminating propaganda and for influencing public opinion against specific government policies. Therefore, part of this work will be devoted to discussing censorship regulations within early Jacobean and Restoration England, and to examining their effects both on Jonson and on the reception of his two tragedies. Each of the two plays is studied in the context of its historical sources in order to determine Jonson's method of adapting his sources as well as the extent of topicality that each play seems to provide, both on the Jacobean and the Restoration stage. The method adopted in this study is to place the two Roman tragedies within the contemporary setting for which they were originally intended and then within the context of the early Restoration period when the two plays are thought to have been revived.

This dissertation is an attempt to describe the characteristics of Thomas Heywood's dramatic style. The study is divided into three parts. The first deals with the playwright's theatrical career and discusses how his practical experience as actor and sharer might have affected his technique as a dramatic writer. The second part defines the scope of the investigation and contains the bulk of the analysis of Heywood's plays. My approach to the mechanics of playwriting is both practical and theoretical. I have attempted to come to an understanding of the technicalities of Heywood's craftsmanship by studying the changes he made in Sir Thomas Moore and in the sources he used for his plays. At the same time, I have tried to comprehend the aesthetic framework within which he worked by referring to the critical ideas of the period and especially to opinions expressed by Heywood himself in An Apology for Actors and elsewhere. The third part of the thesis is an application of the findings of Part Two to the problems of authorship in Fortune by Land and Sea. The thesis shows Heywood's emphasis on essentially theatrical qualities such as visual effects and effects which can be obtained by controlling the relationship of the actor to the audience. It also illustrates his rejection of "Aristotelian" principles of dramatic construction in favour of "rules" derived from the native morality and romance traditions'., and shaped by contemporary theatrical conditions. It concludes that Heywood is essentially a didactic artist but one interested in technical experimentation and audience response.

For a hundred years, between Marlowe's. translation of Ovid's Amores in the 1580s and Rochester's death in 1680, a current of erotic feeling flows through English amatory verse which has as its source the Ovidian Art of Love. This Art sees sexuality as an autonomous activity and it elaborates amatory techniques and scenarios, described individually as 'topics', to enhance the mutual pleasure of both parties. Such a view of sexual relations challenges the prevailing amatory codes of courtly love and Christian monogamy and not infrequently clashes with them. This study traces the impact of the Art of Love upon all the principal non-dramatic writers of the period with the exception of Shakespeare, The Elizabethan appetite for the sensuous and suggestive is shown to develop into the more calculated sensualism of the Caroline court poets which in turn evolves into a deliberate cultivation of predatory appetite at the Restoration. With Rochester's death in 1680 begins a period of erotic decline,, A concluding chapter charts the eighteenth-century transformation of the Ovidian tradition into sentimentalism, raillery and pornography.

The imagery of the plays of John Webster and John Ford is not only verbal: in staging as well as language these dramas display strongly imagistic, symbolic elements. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the seven extant tragedies of Webster and Ford from the point of view of their total dramatic nature - to examine the staging, costumes, hand and large properties, movement and gestures as well as the verbal imagery, and the interplay of these verbal and visual elements. The original appearance, of these plays in their contemporary theatre, and the dramatist's intentions for performance, can only be surmised. The original stage directions are examined for hints of the original presentation: these stage directions may not always be authorial, but, especially in the case of Ford, they seem to reveal the playwright's hand. The dialogue, too, frequently implies particular gestures, grouping or stage placement. The visual imagery, it is here suggested, is created by the dramatist for several purposes: a moral or ironical point may be silently established; a chain of related visual motifs may bind various actions and characters into an organic union; a visualization may appeal outward to other works of art or theatrical or non-dramatic conventions, enlarging the immediate significance by this shorthand reference; visual ceremonies may make concrete the more ephemeral words and feelings of the characters. Each of the tragedies is studied in a separate chapter, in the following order: Webster's The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi, and Appius and Virginia (the authorship of which is disputed); John Ford's The Broken Heart, Love's Sacrifice, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, and Perkin Warbeck. A conclusion indicates the differences between Webster's more overtly theatrical visualizations and Ford's quiet tableaux. The thesis is accompanied by illustrations which are either explanatory or comparative.

This thesis is an intensive study of a manuscript miscellany dating from the early years of the reign of James VI and 1: British Library Manuscript Additional 22601. Compiled by someone who had close links to the court, but who was also likely to have been associated with the Inns of Court and possibly with the south-west of England, the miscellany contains verse (including that of King James) and prose in a wide range of genres, with a particular interest in the political culture of the period. My thesis provides a description of the manuscript's contents as a whole and then goes on to focus on texts from three specific genres: the letter, political prose, and poetry. Studying these individually and in their immediate context, it goes on to trace their appearance in a number of other contemporary miscellanies held in British and North American archives. The two primary contentions of the thesis are (1) that manuscript miscellanies need to be treated as coherent wholes, whose arrangement to some extent determines the meaning of the texts they contain and (2) that in the process of transmission from one manuscript to another texts and their meanings are significantly modified. The act of transcription is thus also an act of interpretation. Building on work by Peter Beal, Mary Hobbs, Harold Love, Henry Woudhuysen and others, the thesis aims to expand our understanding both of the culture of scribal publication and of the ways in which that culture engaged with the political, religious and literary life of the nation.

William Haughton’s Englishmen for My Money, published in three extant early modern editions in 1616, 1626 and 1631, began to receive the literary attention it deserves in the 1990s. Fuller contextual and bibliographical enquiries have yet to be offered, which this edition seeks to redress. The Introduction begins by identifying Haughton’s biographical details, before moving on to issues in dating Englishmen’s composition. It then offers a survey of the play’s generic, historical, and cultural contexts. A reconstruction of theatrical practices is provided. Provisional studies of the underlying manuscript, a hypothetical Q0, and Q1 are offered. Editorial methods are discussed, together with brief descriptions of Q2, Q3 and later editions. The modern-spelling edited Text that follows conforms, with noted exceptions, to the guidelines of Arden Shakespeare Third Series. The Commentary provides glossing, discusses readings and textual cruces, and highlights Haughton’s use of sources, proverbs, and literary, cultural and biblical allusions. Two appendices present information on Q1’s running title descriptions and a census of extant copies for Q1–3. A DVD at the back of the second volume contains a digital facsimile of the base text.

This thesis consists of studies of Lodge's writings in the major genres during his literary career, from 1579 to 1596. The first chapter is a biographical sketch, with particular attention to that period. The literary career is seen as a diversion and a postponement of his real vocations, medicine and Catholicism. The sixth chapter comments briefly on the pamphlets and the later works. The four main chapters treat, respectively, plays, prose fiction, lyric poems and sonnets, narrative and satirical verse. The studies include description of little-known works, structural and prosodic analysis, critical assessment, some textual criticism, source study and consideration of Elizabethan literary history as it impinges upon Lodge's writings. The bibliography is part of the thesis and is intended as a research, tool in its own right. It consists of classified lists of essential materials for scholarly and critical work on Lodge. The thesis is thus partly exploratory and preparatory. The main critical contention is that Lodge's literary reputation has suffered from its subsidiary relationship with Shakespeare's. Lodge excelled as a poet, particularly as a lyrist, and ought to be regarded primarily as such, rather than primarily as a prose romancer (i.e., author of Rosalynde). It is urged that editions of Lodge's works, beginning with the verse, are needed.

The Anatomie of Abuses by Philip Stubbes was printed four times between 1583 and 1595, each new edition undergoing thorough authorial revision. This old-spelling critical edition highlights the complicated textual history of the work and its slow development over a twelve-year period by presenting the text of the final 1595 edition but drawing attention to features of the three earlier versions throughout the critical apparatus. Readers interested in engaging with the work as set out in the original 1595 edition are offered a facsimile of the Huntington copy in an appendix to the thesis. The text of the Abuses has been supplemented with a full and detailed commentary which attempts, in particular, to flesh out the social and economic background in which Stubbes was writing and indicate the extent to which he borrowed material from other contemporary pamphleteers. The introduction includes an examination of the author's supposed Puritan leanings and draws out the fears of excess and social disorder implicit throughout his complaint.

This thesis examines the relationship between the work of the sixteenth century English poet Edmund Spenser and the popular press. Previous critical debate has focused upon Spenser‟s debt to the classical traditions of epic, pastoral and georgic, and the work of Italian poets such as Ariosto, rather than considering the role played by more ephemeral and cheap English publications; my research helps to readdress this imbalance. By combining a close reading of Spenser‟s work with an analysis of widely available publications such as almanacs, books of husbandry, calendars, Elizabethan storybooks, the book of Raynarde the Foxe and the Golden Legend, I have endeavoured to open out Spenser‟s literary environment to include the popular. This has involved an analysis of popular publications in relation to theories of copia and encyclopaedic reading practices and demonstrates that Spenser was fascinated by the process of publication as well as the mental and physiological effects of reading. My research includes an analysis of the continuities between medieval and early modern texts, the body as text and the text as relic, the eye as a conduit for lust and iconographic creation, the problems of defining readership and reader response, the blurring of religious iconography across the boundaries of Protestant and Catholic expression, the mutability of time systems and the ramifications of counsel and censorship. This work contributes to studies concerned with the history of the book and the rise of print culture, while also adding to the critical body of Spenser studies. This thesis has an interdisciplinary focus and draws upon the work of historians such as Peter Burke, Tessa Watt and Elizabeth Eisenstein alongside works of literary criticism.