The bawdy 'talent' to 'occupy' in Cymbeline, the Complaint of Rosamond, and the Elizabethan Homily for rogation week

Review of English Studies

Volumn 54, Issue 213, 2003, Pages 27-51

  Go, Kenji ^a  

^a TEIKYO UNIVERSITY   (Japan)

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EID: 62949148186     PISSN: 00346551     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/res/54.213.27     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. 3 vols. (London, 1994); cited below as Williams, Dictionary.
2. (London, 1997); cited below as Williams, Glossary.
3. Shakespeare's plays are cited from The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare, ed. C. Hinman (New York, 1968): its 'through line numbers' are followed by the corresponding act, scene,
4. and line numbers of The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, 2nd edn. (Boston, 1997).
5. Shakespeare's Plays in Quarto, ed. M. Allen and K. Muir (Berkeley, 1981), will be cited for quarto texts.
6. B, G, Kinnear emended 'Talents' to 'telling' in the sense of 'counting, reckoning'; see his Cruces Shakespearianae (London, 1883), 468-9.
7. A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Tragedie of Cymbeline, ed. H. H. Furness (Philadelphia, 1913), 89-91.
8. Cymbeline, ed, J. M. Nosworthy (London, 1955), 36.
9. Cymbeline, ed. R. Warren (Oxford, 1998), 119.
10. Quotations from Rosamond follow the 1st 1592 edn. of Delia. Contayning certayne Sonnets: with the complaint of Rosamond (STC 6243.2) as it is reproduced in facsimile by the Scolar Press (London, 1969).
11. The verse line numbers are identical with those found in the editions of Rosamond by J. Kerrigan, in his Motives of Woe: Shakespeare and 'Female Complaint', A Critical Anthology (Oxford, 1991), 165-90,
12. and by A. C. Sprague, in his Samuel Daniel: Poems and A Defence of Rhyme (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), 39-63.
13. v.
14. See e.g. R. Law, 'Daniel's Rosamond and Shakespeare', University of Texas Studies of English, 26 (1947), 42-8;
15. C. Seronsy, 'Daniel's Complaint of Rosamond: Origins and Influence of an Elizabethan Poem', Lock Haven Review, 2 (1960), 46-57;
16. R. Underwood, Shakespeare on Love (Salzburg, 1986), 20-38;
17. J. Kerrigan, The Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint (Harmondsworth, 1986), 13-14.
18. V. Heitzel, Fair Rosamond: A Study of the Development of a Literary Theme (Evanston, Ill., 1947), 19.
19. None of the following recent criticisms of Rosamond discusses the matron's argument: C. Hulse, Metamorphic Verse; The Elizabethan Minor Epic (Princeton, 1981), 59-65, 205-9;
20. T. Roche, Jr., Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences (New York, 1989), 343-56;
21. G. Schmitz, The Fall of Women in Early English Narrative Verse (Cambridge, 1990), 127-33;
22. L. Klein, The Exemplary Sidney and the Elizabethan Sonneteer (Newark and London, 1998), 155-61.
23. R. Primeau, in 'Daniel and the Mirror Tradition: Dramatic Irony in The Complaint of 'Rosamond', Studies in English Literature 1500 1900, 15 (1975), 21-36, only briefly touched on the matron's argument, claiming (unconvincingly, I think) that it is 'actually a double-edged commentary on Rosamond's character' (p. 27).
24. Kerrigan, Motives of Woe, 174;
25. Elizabethan Verse Romances, ed. M. M. Reese (London, 1968), 205.
26. For the reader's convenience, the signatures of this edition are followed by the corresponding page numbers of The Book of Common Prayer 1559: The Elizabethan Prayer Book, ed. J. E. Booty (Washington, DC, 1976).
27. r;
28. Booty, p. 59.
29. v;
30. r;
31. Quoted from the title page of Certaine Sermons. Quotations from the two books of Anglican homilies follow the texts of the last known Elizabethan editions of 1595, which are exact reprints of the 1587 editions. For the reader's convenience, the signatures of the 1595 editions are followed by the corresponding page numbers of G. E. Corrie's edition of the 1574 homilies, Certain Sermons Appointed by the Queen's Majesty . . . (Cambridge, 1850).
32. r; Corrie, p. 10),
33. r;
34. According to Naseeb Shaheen there are as many as 101 references to Proverbs in Shakespeare's plays. See 'Index to Shakespeare's Biblical References', in his Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays (Newark and London, 1999), 789-91.
35. For the importance of the relationship between Fortune and providence in The Mirror for Magistrates (1559), in the tradition of which Rosamond was written, see F. Kiefer, Fortune and Elizabethan Tragedy (San Marino, 1983), 30-59 (= ch. 2, 'Fortune and Providence in The Mirror for Magistrates').
36. r;
37. r-v;
38. OED (world, 4d) defines the signification of this 'world' as follows: 'In biblical and religious use: Those who are concerned only with the interests and pleasures of this life or with temporal or mundane things; the worldly and irreligious.'
39. See e.g. The maid Protea's prayer to Neptune: 'I hate that Marchant, who, if he find my beautie worth one pennie, will put it to use to gaine ten, hauing no Religion in his mind, nor word in his mouth but money' (Lvly, Loues Metamorphosis, III. ii. 32-4);
40. see also Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, 1. 164,
41. E, A, J, Honigmann glosses this 'sport' as 'sexual intercourse' in his Arden 3 edition of Othello (Walton on Thames, 1997), 177.
42. See Williams, Glossary, 285.
43. Indeed, in the entire canon of Shakespeare, 'occupy' is used only twice, in 2 Henry IV (quoted below) and in Mercutio's speech in Romeo and Juliet II. iv. 100, which is filled with sexual double entendres.
44. v). Timber was first printed in the 1640 folio with the imprint dated 1641.
45. OED cites the following definition from Florio's dictionary: 'Fottere, to iape, to sard, to fucke, to swive, to occupy'.
46. r), where fottitura is defined as 'a iaping, a swiuing, a fucking, a sarding, an occupying'. It is worth noting that all the other words here ('fuck', 'jape', 'swive', 'sard') that directly signified the act of copulation were too vulgar for Shakespeare to use in his works.
47. For a detailed account of this coital sense of 'occupy', see Williams, Dictionary, 969-71.
48. r;
49. r). This is the earliest known Jacobean edition,
50. For a brief but cogent account of the publication of the 1611 Authorized Version, see A. S. Herbert, Historical Catalogue of Printed Editions of the English Bible 1525-1961 (London, 1968), 130-3.
51. Quotations from the AV of 1611 follow The Holy Bible: A facsimile in a reduced size of the Authorized Version published in the year 1611 (Oxford, 1911).
52. Herbert, Historical Catalogue, 130.
53. The 1602 edition of the Bishops' Bible was used by King James's translators as the basis of their new version. See E. C. Jacobs, 'King James's Translators: The Bishops' Bible New Testament Revised', The Library, 6th ser., 14 (1992), 100-26.
54. Aside from the ones to be quoted from Ezek. 27, see Exod. 38: 24;
55. Judsg. 16: 11;
56. Ecclus. 12: 3, 38: 25;
57. I Cor. 14: 16;
58. Heb. 13: 9,
59. The GB uses 'occupied' once in Ecclus. 39: 1, whereas the AV uses it twice.
60. We may also note the 'occupiers' in Ezek. 27: 27 ('the occupiers of thy merchandize'), which is used in the BB, the GB, and the AV.