‘Lett none our Lombard author rudely blame for’s righteous paine’: An Annotated Copy of Sir William Davenant’s Gondibert (1651)

• Published in: Library Vol. 16; no. 1; pp. 24 - 50
• Main Author: Allsopp, Niall
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Oxford University Press 01.03.2015; Oxford Publishing Limited (England)
• Subjects: D Avenant, William, Sir (1606-1668); Humanism; Poetry; Poets; Reading
• ISSN: 0024-2160; 1744-8581
• DOI: 10.1093/library/16.1.24

The article focuses on hostile annotations on a copy of the 1651 quarto edition of Sir William Davenant's epic poem 'Gondibert', now held at the National Library of Scotland. It describes the problems of interpreting the annotations; their likely date, social context, and political stance; the secondary reading used alongside 'Gondibert'; and their literary-critical responses to the text. The annotations can be related to the satires on 'Gondibert' written by the circle around Sir John Denham; one of the annotators may indeed have been Denham himself. The annotators were employing traditional humanist collaborative reading practices in a manner designed to make nonsense of Davenant's poem, objecting to Davenant's departures from the humanist tradition.