Part III: The Modern Version of Astrophil and Stella #2

If I were to teach this sonnet, I'd teach it out of the Oxford paperback edition of Sidney's Major Works, edited by Katherine Duncan-Jones. Here's the way that text represents the sonnet:

Not at first sight, nor with a dribbed~ shot,
Love gave the wound which while I breathe will bleed:
But known worth~ did in mine of time proceed,
Till by degrees it had full conquest got.
I saw, and liked; I liked, but loved not;
I loved, but straight did not what love decreed:
At length, to love's decrees I, forced, agreed,
Yet with repining at so partial lot.
Now even that footstep of lost liberty
Is gone, and now like slave-born Muscovite~
I call it praise to suffer tyranny;
And now employ the remnant of my wit
To make myself believe that all is well,
While with a feeling skill I paint~ my hell.

So: what are the instructive differences between this version, my recollected version, and the first published version? Right off the bat, my recollection and this version seem much more similar. (There's a reason for that: I memorized the sonnet out of this edition a few years ago). Still, my version has evolved: I'm clearly influenced by the dash-happiness of Emily Dickinson, for example, and I use dashes instead of colons or semi-colons to enhance the feelings of rushed enjambment in the sonnet. This might be because I memorize by reading out loud--giving me a different perspective on line breaks. I tend to see them less as caesuras than as flexible sluice-control devices, if that makes sense.

Secondly, and less obviously, my version isn't staking an authority claim. Both the Oxford edition and the 1591 edition are framing themselves as authoritative presentations of the sonnet--either through a preface, explaining the care and research that informs the sonnet text, or through the scholarly apparatus of endnotes (~ marks here) seeking to explain the precise meaning of potentially confusing words. My edition, conversely, doesn't claim authoritative status. It will never be cited or consulted in classes, and it has no historical cachet. Instead, it acts as a digital performance--one iteration of a personalized, remembered recitation, reflecting one specific personal interaction with the text. Here, my version starts to cross over into manuscript culture, even though I'm typing this in a new print medium. If I can internalize, modify, and re-iterate this sonnet on a blog that functions like a miscellany, then I'm doing an altered version of an early modern practice: compiling and rewriting texts, in the context of other texts, for my own purposes. While my version of the piece has different punctuation and wording than the others, then, it also represents a slightly different approach to poetry itself.

Part II: the 1591 edition of Astrophil and Stella #2

The earliest edition of Astrophil and Stella available on EEBO is the 1591 edition, printed for Thomas Newman. As a whole, the edition is characterized by oddly placed commas--but framed by a fascinating introduction, in which the 'finder' of the piece positions it within both manuscript and print culture:

"I haue beene very carefull in the Printing of it, and where as being spred abroade in written Coppies, it had gathered much corruption by ill Writers: I haue vsed their helpe and aduice in correcting & restoring it to his first dignitie, that I knowe were of skill and experience in those matters." (A2r)

At first glance, Newman here seems to be simultaneously denigrating the manuscript transmittors of the piece (they have introduced corruption into the work) and relying on their advice to perfect it (they have also brought it back to an originary state of "dignitie"). Because of a late-coming clause, though, it's possible that Newman consulted those "of skill and experience" instead of the manuscript transmitters, who are a separate group. Still, the possibility of the elision of these groups is suggestive. Manuscript transmission, under this elision, is capable both of perfecting and corrupting a text, depending on the analyst's point of view.

In light of this paradox, my attempt at transcribing the sonnet from memory yesterday can be seen in two different ways: an original, personal version of the text, based on my own "skill and experience" with Astrophil and Stella--or a corruption of Sidney's authorial intention, which ought to be corrected by public-spirited (and/or profit-seeking?) folks like Newman. Below is Newman's more "authoritative" version of the sonnet--but is it actually more official, or less corrupt, than mine?

NOt at first sight, nor with a dribbing shot,
Loue gaue the wound, which while I breath will bleede:
But knowne, worth did in tract of time proceede,
Till by degrees it had full conquest got.
I sawe and lik'd, I lik'd but loued not,
I lou'd, but did not straight what Loue decreede:
At length to Loues decrees, I first agreede.
Yet with repining at so partiall lot.
Now euen that foot-steppe of lost libertie
Is gone, and now like slaue borne Muscouite:
I call it praise to suffer tyrannie, 

And nowe imploy the remnant of my wit

To make my selfe beleeue that all is well,
While with a feling skill I paint my hell.

Part 1: Astrophil and Stella #2: Memorizing a Saturday Sonnet (Special Edition)

This weekend, for fun, I'm conducting a little experiment. First, I'm going to type a sonnet from memory. Then, I'm going to see how the first published version on EEBO records the same work. Finally, I'll check the published scholarly edition that I'd point my students toward, if I were to teach the sonnet. Here's the first part:

Not at first sight, nor with a dribbed shot
Love gave the wound which while I breathe will bleed--
but known worth did, in mine of time, proceed
'til, by degrees, it had full conquest got.
I saw and liked; I liked--but loved not;
I loved; but straight did not what love decreed.
At length, to love's decrees, I, forced, agreed--
yet with repining at so partial lot.
Now, even that footstep of lost liberty
is gone, and now, like slave-born Muscovite,
I call it praise to suffer tyranny--
and so employ the remnant of my wit
to make myself believe that all is well,
while, with a feeling skill, I paint my hell.

[Sidney, Astrophil and Stella]

I chose this sonnet because I knew the punctuation and spelling [Muscovit?] would be interesting. Tomorrow, I'll dig up the first EEBO version that I can find, and we'll see where the differences are. Hopefully, we can also illustrate some of the word-level and sentence-level changes that could take place within a culture of manuscript transmission--which, interestingly, has much in common with the modern blogosphere.

Twitter as Memory Theater

In her thoughtful book Shakespeare's Memory Theatre (Cambridge UP, 2010), Lina Perkins Wilder says that props, actors, and the space of the performance area "provide the vocabulary of Shakespeare's memory theatre, but they do not function merely as physicalized reminders or mnemonic res... Rather, in their frequent absence such objects become a way to evoke a mind and a past that move between the common (shared by the audience, staged elsewhere in the play) and the comparatively private (unstaged, but described in ways that evoke the physical materials of the stage)" (2).

I've been thinking a lot about the role of Twitter in my research recently, and this quote made me think about the status of individual tweets. If Shakespeare's actors, props, and even spaces could be not only reminder-objects but points of merger between a "common" and a "comparatively private" space, could tweets somehow be the modern equivalent of those objects, allowing past and present, thinking and viewing, absent and present, to merge?

I've recently found myself tweeting mnemonically, for lack of a better way to describe it. There's a great Folger blog post on signatures that I know I'll want to find again, for example, and so I sent a tweet about it to remind myself where it is and what it said. Even as that tweet serves me as a memory device, though, it's also an act of performance with an audience: I'm publicly remembering, in such a way that other Twitter users can access a virtual space, and remember the same thing that I'm choosing to remember. Absent things and people (the Folger blog, my Twitter followers) are entering a dialogue with the things that I'm currently doing and writing. I'm not sure if that makes the Twitterverse a giant memory theatre, or something more along the lines of a giant, group-accessible diary. What do you think?