Thomas Randolph

Thomas Randolph — whom W.C. Hazlitt called one of the most delightful lyric and dramatic poets of his age and whose early death, as Thorn-Drury remarked, inspired tributes expressing such a sense of loss to letters as I think has never attended the death of any other English poet — has left scarcely any surviving examples of his handwriting. His popularity at Cambridge and elsewhere, however, ensured a considerable circulation of his poems in contemporary manuscript copies.

The only indisputably authentic examples of his hand known at present are six signatures among Cambridge University records (RnT 596-602) together with two inscriptions in Randolph's New Testament, now in the Bodleian Library (*RnT 594). What may possibly have been an authentic signature is in an exemplum of Seneca's Tragoediae (Venice, 1517), which was last seen at an auction in New York in 1911 (*RnT 597).

The library of Trinity College, Cambridge, contains at least two books bearing the elaborate signature Tho. Randolph: namely, Pierre de la Ramée, Grammaire (Paris, 1572) [III. 18. 92], and Antoine La Roche Chandieu (A. Sadeel), De verbo Dei scripto (Morges, 1582) [F. 12. 6]. While it would be pleasant to think that these were left to his college by the poet, the signatures actually belong to his earlier namesake, the diplomat Thomas Randolph (1523-90), an identical specimen of whose signature can be found reproduced in John Gough Nichols, Autographs of Royal, Noble, Learned, and Remarkable Personages conspicuous in English History (London, 1829), facing p. [27].

It may be noted that the poet's handwriting evinced in the meagre examples mentioned is by no means dissimilar to that of his younger brother, Robert (1612/13-71), whose signature occasionally appears in university records of the late 1620s-1630s (such as the Disbursements Books) associated with Christ Church, Oxford.

On the basis of the university subscriptions — written, it has to be said, in a relatively conventional, not particularly distinctive, predominantly italic script of the period — claims have occasionally been made for the identification as autograph of certain poetical manuscripts (RnT 358, by Fredson Bowers, for example). The most notable of these is the copy of On sixe maids bathing themselves in a River, now at Worcester College, Oxford (RnT 211), which was accepted as autograph without any reservations by the late P.J. Croft and reproduced in his Autograph Poetry (1972). This manuscript is, as Croft observes, obviously a fair copy executed with some care; it shows some attempt at calligraphic presentation — such as the line of flourishes after the title and the engrossing of proper names and other important words — though the overall unevenness leaves no doubt that it is not the work of a professional scribe. Indeed, there are features here that are strikingly similar to the penmanship found in Randolph's Cambridge subscriptions: for instance, very similar formations of a, c, d (with its doubled back looped or curled ascender), h, i, l (with its slight waver), m and capital T, as well as certain adopted forms of the Greek e, p, r, s (and double-s), and t; in addition to a tendency to leave gaps between letters (notably after initial capitals and after o), and the unevenness in the level of the base line. On the other hand, the overall aspect of the manuscript is, unlike the Cambridge subscriptions, strongly idiosyncratic, sufficiently distinctive to be recognizable if it appeared elsewhere. Letter-forms which seem dissimilar to Randolph's include the variation of Greek e to italic e; the shape of the bowl of the p (nearly closed, with an inward, concave curve, rather than outward, convex curve); the occasional cursory form of r wherein the cross-stroke is so close to the base line that the letter looks like a z; the variant forms of double-s, with long s more accentuated in loops and curls and short s embellished with a small superscript curl leaning to the right; sc with calligraphic ligature; and variant t, with the spout formed by the pen doubling back on itself up the stem and across, or else by the pen curling sharply back to the left and then moving across to the right (to look more like a +), or even, in at least one instance, to a-two stroke t ornamented with introductory and terminal flourishes at the top and foot of the stem respectively. These dissimilarities supplement peculiar features for which the Cambridge subscriptions provide no opportunities for comparison: a two-stroke f, with accentuated tail flicked to the left, and g, with heavily looped tail, for instance. Then, besides all this, one might ask, how many seventeenth-century poets are known to have signed autograph copies of their own verse (the signature here, incidentally, being T: Randolph, as opposed to the full Thomas Randolph in the academic records)? Admittedly it is not unknown, especially in formal presentation manuscripts (examples by Jonson and Charles Cotton, for instance), but it is not common in this period, and signatures are most commonly added to copies of poems by their scribes for identification rather than for literary proprietary purposes.

The discovery of the 1581 New Testament (*RnT 594), with its clearly genuine but somewhat freer, more stylish ownership inscription by Randolph provides a further clue to the measure of flexibility to which the poet's handwriting might have been subject. Nevertheless, and somewhat surprisingly, it fails to support Croft's attribution. The defined character and flow of the writing in this inscription is even more markedly different from that in the Worcester manuscript, with, inter alia, its peculiar formations of g, r, terminal s and majuscule C.

Notwithstanding all these reasons for scepticism, one might, just possibly, be persuaded to agree with Croft — to accept that, on balance, the palaeographical arguments in favour of Randolph outweigh those against. The dissimilarities could be explained by natural variation, perhaps, had we more substantial examples of Randolph's handwriting available for comparison, but for the matter of text. The Worcester manuscript, by comparison with the other texts of On sixe maids bathing themselves in a River, is what editors would generally call a good text, lacking in obvious corruptions. Nevertheless, the scribe mistakenly refers in line 22 to Iolas instead of Hylas, a reference unique to this text (except that Iolaus appears in the Peverell manuscript: RnT 207) and which is properly corrected in all other known texts, both printed and manuscript. Croft argues that it is much more likely that Iolas (i.e. Iolaus, nephew of Hercules) is the author's original reading, subsequently corrected to Hylas (or Hilas: i.e. the boy beloved of Hercules), than that a scribe misread Hylas as Iolas. He seeks support for this surmise by suggesting that Randolph might have misunderstood a reference in Spenser's The Faerie Queene (V.v.24), which actually refers to the lady Iola (and despite the fact that Spenser does refer to Iolaus elsewhere in his poem). In fact, the likelihood that so classically trained and so classically conscious a scholar as Randolph would ever have confused Hylas (the well-known subject of treatment by Theocritus and Propertius, as well as Homer) for Iolaus, let alone for Spenser's Iola, seems somewhat remote. When all is said and done, the chances are that the Worcester manuscript, albeit neatly written on a separate sheet, is only one more contemporary copy of a well-liked poem by Randolph in an unidentified hand.

One other manuscript text — ignored by Croft but recorded earlier by Greg and Thorn-Drury — has a special claim to authenticity. This is the Dublin manuscript of Randolph's epithalamium on the marriage of his Trinity contemporary George Goring (1608-57) on 25 July 1629 (RnT 147). Unless it is a neat copy of the original made by or for some other member of the Goring family or, more likely, of the family of his nineteen-year-old Irish bride, Lettice Boyle (d.1643), daughter of the statesman Richard Boyle (1566-1643), first Earl of Cork, the Dublin manuscript has all the appearance of being the original presentation manuscript of this epithalamium. Granted one scribal error probably caused by eyeskip (a couplet at lines 46-7 was omitted and then subsequently inserted in the margin with appropriate asterisks), the manuscript is a carefully transcribed fair copy occupying all four pages of a single bifolium (unfortunately now badly damaged) once folded into a small square about three by three inches. The Latin title of the poem is given in full and separated from the main text, which is neatly laid out (with many prominent words distinguished by initial capitals) as a sequence of three poems (the second and third under the sub-headings To the Bridegroome and To the Bride), with a clearly distinguished coda (heavily indented after a rule), concluding with a separately spaced and indented tag (a rhymed couplet about a quarter of the way down the last page). This is followed (after a two-and-a-half-inch space, half-way down the page and ranged to the right) by the subscription Your humble Seruant, and then (after a further three-inch space, about three quarters of the way down the page to the extreme right) by the full name Thomas Randolph, written out with elaborate flourishes. The manuscript is characterized, in fact, by the formal layout commonly bestowed on commendatory and dedicatory verse of the period in both manuscript and printed form, very much betokening a presentation copy. This impression is reinforced by contrast with the only other known text of this poem, a casual and incomplete transcript, made with little thought for layout, in a contemporary miscellany at Emmanuel College, Cambridge (RnT 148). According to Moore Smith in 1926, Greg was inclined to believe, nevertheless, that the Dublin manuscript was probably written out by a professional scribe on Randolph's behalf — perhaps the most likely explanation. While, for instance, the signature here has features in common with Randolph's Cambridge subscriptions (the capital T, with curled cross-stroke, here accentuated, minuscule a, i, m, n, o, with breaks both before and after, s, d with a looped backward-leaning ascender, and p with a flourished terminal serif), there are also striking dissimilarities: a rather more graceful loop here on the d, with no sign of jerkiness, a more heavily looped h, no sign of Randolph's characteristic waver in the stem of the l, a distinctly stiff, formal appearance to the accentuated p, not to mention the peculiar decorative flourish with which the signature concludes suggesting a somewhat self-conscious, measured, possibly even imitative script. Similar reservations could be extended to the main text of the poem (initial capital T, for instance, does not always have a space after it; the Greek e has an atypical rounded formation, as well as varying on occasions to italic e; the r here always appears with a foot-serif; and the s is also unusually rounded sometimes, as well as the double-s's taking the form of two short s's instead of a long and short s; all in addition to peculiarities of style for which no comparisons are available, such as the distinctive g or the variant forms of st, with long or short s and calligraphic ligature). In short, this is not the definitive example of an autograph literary manuscript by Randolph. At best it remains the only known manuscript text of any of Randolph's poems which may have been directly associated with the poet himself.

Other references to the existence of autograph poems by Randolph belong to the seventeenth century. Unless echoing a eulogistic convention possibly found also in the celebrated preface to the Shakespeare First Folio, Randolph's brother-in-law, Richard West, may perhaps have been recalling sight of Randolph's neat autograph manuscripts of his poems when he praised the poet's facility of composition in his commendatory poem in Poems (1638):

In his Brief Lives John Aubrey claimed that Randolph's autograph verse History of the Incarnation of our Saviour, written when he was less than ten years old, was kept as a rarity by his brother John (Clark, II, 192, cited in Thorn-Drury, p. x, and see Aubrey's original account in Bodleian, MS Aubrey 6, f. 114r). Some years later, in an exemplum of Gerard Langbaine's An Account of the English Dramatic Poets (Oxford, 1691), William Oldys (1696-1761) noted that Old Counsellor Fane of Colchester had A MS. copy of Randolph's poems, an original, as he said, with many additions never printed, being devolved to him as the author's relation (British Library, C.28.g.1, cited in Thorn-Drury, p. xxi). Miss J.T. Smith of the Essex Record Office has suggested that Oldys may here be referring to the Secretary of State Sir Henry Vane the Elder (1589-1655), who was certainly a royalist Counsellor and whose wife came from Tolleshunt Darcy, a few miles outside Colchester. Nevertheless, unless it can be identified as one of the extant manuscript collections listed below, neither this manuscript nor Randolph's juvenilia are known today.

There is, in fact, reason to believe that no clearly authoritative manuscript collection of Randolph's poems was known even to his first publishers. A few minor contributions to printed university miscellanies, a very occasional commendatory poem, and certain of his university dramatic works are all that the author himself saw published in his lifetime. In 1638, three years after Randolph's premature death, his brother Robert published a collected edition of his works (a slightly expanded, second edition appearing in 1640). West's commendatory poem already quoted suggests that this edition is incomplete, having been made from scattered sources:

Thus, while the decision by Randolph's most recent editor, George Thorn-Drury, to accept the editions of 1638 and 1640 as textually sound is not without justification (the supervision of this [Poems (1638)] has been deservedly praised), his related decision to dismiss, for the most part, MS. collections or common-place books out of hand is regrettable. In this, it has to be said, he was merely following Hazlitt, who declared, quite unjustifiably, that as a general rule, the manuscript work of the seventeenth century is of very inferior importance to that of the preceding centuries, and presents, to a large extent in fact, a debased and corrupt text of the printed books of the period … where an author has been thought worth paper and print by his own generation, the published volume contains, in nine instances out of ten, superior and purer readings, the MSS, being often derived merely from the printed text, with the accession of such blunders of every kind as an illiterate and slovenly scribe might be expected to perpetrate (I, xix-xx).

Not only is the value of a number of contemporary manuscript miscellanies evident in that they preserve many of Randolph's poems which did not find their way into his brother's published edition (see Thorn-Drury, pp. 147-71, and discussion of the canon below), but the majority of such manuscripts are likely to predate 1638 and to be products of those university coteries in which Randolph's poems circulated in his own lifetime, having scarcely less authority (and often considerably more) than the rak'd up … Ashes afterward gathered by his brother.