Sir Thomas Overbury. His Wife. With addition of many new Elegies upon his untimely and much lamented Death.
OVERBURY, (Sir Thomas),; WEBSTER (John) & DEKKER (Thomas).
As also New Newes, and divers more Characters, (never before annexed) written by himself and other learned Gentlemen. The ninth impression augmented.
Overbury's name on the title within a woodcut monumental cartouche; woodcut ornaments and initials.
Ninth Edition. 8vo. [148 leaves]. Mid-seventeenth-century sprinkled calf (joints repaired).
London: Edward Griffin for Laurance L'Isle, 1616
STC 18911 (British Library, Trinity College Cambridge & Linen Hall Library Belfast in U.K.; U.S.A. +). Somewhat dampstained, particularly at the front. Slight worm damage in the upper margin has affected the upper inner corner and inner margin of the title and following few leaves, with no loss of text; there is also a tiny wormhole, mostly in the inner margin of a few leaves but occasionally touching a letter. Without the first and last blank leaves.
An engraved portrait of Overbury by Simon Passe published by Laurence Lisle (cut-round) has been mounted on the front flyleaf.
On 15 September 1613 Sir Thomas Overbury, close friend and adviser of King James I's favourite Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, was found dead "of natural causes" in the Tower of London where he had been held since 21 April. He had been imprisoned there ostensibly for refusing the King's offer of a foreign embassy but actually at the behest of Carr and the relatives of his mistress, the newly-divorced Frances Howard, Countess of Essex, as he had objected to their proposed marriage which was to take place three months later, the Viscount having been advanced to the Earldom of Somerset. His health had been declining for at least three months before his death but it was only two years later that the true cause, slow poisoning, emerged from the confession of an apothecary's boy. The Earl and Countess of Somerset, Sir Gervase Elwes, Governor of the Tower, James Franklin, an apothecary, Richard Weston, a gaoler, and a Mrs. Turner were all arrested. Elwes, Franklin, Weston and Turner were tried on 18 Nov. 1615, convicted and executed. The Earl and Countess were tried and convicted in May 1616. The Countess, undoubtedly the main hand in the plot, was sentenced to death but was pardoned two months later and was released from the Tower, with her husband, in January 1622.
Sir Thomas Overbury's 46-verse poem A Wife, now a Widow, based on Ovid's De Remedia Amatoria, was first published posthumously in 1614 (Bodley & Trinity College Cambridge only). To the second edition of the same year were added "many witty characters and conceited Newes" by himself and others, including John Donne's 2½ page "Newes from the very Country". The book's success was ensured by the scandal of the Somersets' arrest and trial. and it continued to develop with more material being added to subsequent editions until Overbury's 47-verse poem was swamped by a total, in this edition, of 20 newsletters and 81 characters (one in verse by "Sir H. W.") of an eventual 82. Of these characters, 32 which first appear in the sixth edition of 1615, have been attributed to John Webster. Others have been attributed to Thomas Dekker. Only a handful at most may be by Overbury himself, including "A good Woman" and "A very Woman". Nine appear in this edition for the first time. In addition there are 40 pages of preliminary poems on Overbury and his Wife, ending with an "Elegie on the late Lord William Haward Barron of Effingham dead the tenth of December. 1615", and an "Elegie on the Death of the Lady Rutland" (both added to the seventh edition of 1616 for the first time). Overbury is said to have fallen in love with the Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland (d. 1612), the daughter of Sir Philip Sidney, and his Wife is supposed to have been written for her. Indeed, Ben Jonson claimed that, unaware of Overbury's intentions, he was persuaded by him to read it to her.
The "characters" present an extraordinary range of English life and include A good Woman, A Dissembler, A Courtier, An Amorist, An Affectate Traveller, A Braggadochio Welchman, A Taylor, A Whoore, A very Whore, A meere Common Lawyer, A Meere Scholler, An Almanacke-maker, A Maquerela, in plaine English a Bawd, A Chamber-maide, An Innes of Court man, A Pyrate, An ordinarie Fencer, A faire and happy Milke-mayd, An Arrant Horse-courser, A Roaring Boy, A Divellish Usurer, A Reverend Iudge, A vertuous Widdow, A Canting Rogue, A French Cooke, An excellent Actor and A Rymer. Five of the nine new "characters" added at the end of this edition have a legal air: A Prison, A Prisoner, A Creditour, A Sarieant [Sergeant], and A Jaylour.
These are followed by twenty satirical newsletters: "Newes from any whence. Or, Old Truth, under a Supposal of Noveltie. Occasioned by divers Essayes, and private passages of Wit, betweene sundrie Gentlemen upon that subiect." They are mostly signed, usually just with initials, and include "Newes from Court" (Sir. T. Over[bury].), "Countrey Newes" (Sir T. R.), "Newes from the very Countrey" (I[ohn]. D[onne].), "Newes from my Lodging" (B. R.), "Newes from the lower end of the Table (I. C., attributed to John Cleveland), "Newes from the Bed" (R. S.) and "Newes from the Chimney corner" (unsigned).
The character of "An excellent Actor", is thought to be of the actor and manager Richard Burbage, Shakespeare's partner in the Globe Theatre. Together with the 31 other new characters which first appeared in the sixth edition of 1615, it is generally attributed to the playwright John Webster. The eleventh edition of 1622 added two other pieces by Donne.
The main group of "characters" are followed by "Certaine Edicts from a Parliament in Eutopia; Written by the Lady Southwell" (4pp.). They consist of seventeen proto-feminist jokes, e.g. "Item, that no Lady that useth to paint shall finde fault with her painter that hath not counterfeted her picture faire enough, unlesse she will acknowledge herselfe to be the better counterfetter" and "Item, that no Lady shal court her looking glasse, past one houre in a day, unlesse she professe to be an Inginer." One includes an obscure reference to Will Sommers, Henry VIII's jester, so like many jokes they are likely to have a long history. Lady Southwell may well be Anne (1573-1636), daughter of Sir Thomas Harris of Cornworthy in Devon, who married in 1593 Sir Thomas Southwell, of Spixworth, Norfolk, nephew of the Catholic poet and martyr Robert Southwell, and 2ndly. in 1626 Captain Henry Sibthorpe, Sergeant-Major and Privy Councillor of the Province of Munster in Ireland. She kept a Commonplace Book, now in the Folger Shakespeare Library, which includes her own poetry along with extracts from her reading and a list of 100 books compiled after her death by her husband, many of which must have belonged to her (Sister Jean Carmel Cavanaugh, "The Library of Lady Southwell and Captain Sibthorpe", in Studies in Bibliography, 20, 1967, pp. 243-54). Jean Klene, editor of The Southwell-Sibthorpe Commonplace Book, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 147 (University of Arizona, 1997) argues that Lady Anne Southwell is definitely the author of the "Answere to the very Countrey Newes" (A. S.) which replies to John Donne's "Newes from the verie Countrey" and probably also of the "Answere to the Court Newes" (unsigned) which replies to Overbury's "Newes from Court". Klene thinks the edicts may be by another Lady Southwell (Elizabeth) but considering Anne's contributions to the "Newes" she seems to us the more likely candidate.
All the early editions are rare on the market today and this is probably the earliest reasonably obtainable with the additional Webster characters and the John Donne "Newes".
Literature: Murphy (Gwendolen), Bibliography of English Character-Books, p. 20 (edition h); Paylor (W. J.), "The Editions of the 'Overburian' Characters", in The Library, XVII (1936-7), pp. 340-8; White (Beatrice), Cast of Ravens: The Strange Case of Sir Thomas Overbury (London, 1965).
|
