Anthony Rooley’s article in this journal on the Neo-Platonic background to John Dowland’s Lachrimae
2020; Oxford University Press; Volume: 48; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/em/caaa044
ISSN1741-7260
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Literary Studies
ResumoAnthony Rooley’s article in this journal on the Neo-Platonic background to John Dowland’s Lachrimae (Rooley, ‘New light on John Dowland’s songs of darkness’, Early Music, xi/1 (1983), pp.6–21) has received little support, for good reasons. At the same time, the failure to address his arguments has prevented us from seeing an interesting and instructive fact about the reception of these compositions in the musical and literary world of the time. It should also be said at the outset that Rooley’s linking of the Latin titles of the Lachrimae (published in 1604) with the texts of the lute songs from the same period (especially the Second Book of Songs of 1600) is, in my view, helpful—and is presupposed in what follows here. The ‘fact’ mentioned above has to do with the claim near the end of the article that ‘William Prynne’s enigmatic words’, which Rooley quotes, encapsulate beautifully the blend of pessimistic and optimistic elements found in the Neo-Platonism (and its offshoots) explored by Rooley in the article (p.20). The quotation comes from William Prynne’s Histrio-mastix (London, 1633; see Rooley, ‘New light’, p.21, n.17). No page number is given. The same quotation, however, is found in Diana Poulton’s biography of Dowland, where again (as sometimes elsewhere in Poulton) no page number is given (Poulton, John Dowland (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972; 2/1982), pp.131–2); an asterisk marks a footnote, but that note only discusses the serious legal problems that Prynne became caught up in. Rooley and Poulton give the quotation in exactly the same form: same beginning and end, same punctuation, same capitalizations, same three-dot ellipsis to mark an omission. Prynne, then, must be investigated on one’s own; happily, the rare book reading room at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, possesses a copy of Prynne’s Histrio-mastix, The Players Scourge, or Actors Tragedie (London: E. A. and W. I. for Michael Sparke, 1633).
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