Comments | angevin2: I'm not sure this is really a delicate delight.

angevin2

I'm not sure this is really a delicate delight.

Jul 18, 2007 02:59

Here's another installment from Johnson's Golden Garland of Princely Pleasures and Delicate Delights. I mentioned it several days ago and still find it too much fun not to share, though it will probably make the devoutly Ricardian among you a bit unhappy. Also, I wonder if it's inspired by Shakespeare: his Richard III after all was a big hit by all ( Read more... )

the golden garland, balladry, richard iii

Comments 7

lblanchard July 18 2007, 11:36:20 UTC

Interesting. I wonder if it's a nose-thumbing toward Master of the Revels Sir George Buck's revisionist history of Richard III, published 1619, if memory serves.

We Ricardians are, in the main, a tolerante bunch. After all, we put up digital editions of both The Ballad of Bosworth Ffielde and the Song of Lady Bessyie on our website. They're both out of Bishop Percy's Folio.

angevin2 July 18 2007, 19:47:41 UTC

That's a good question -- the only version I can find on EEBO, though, is dated 1646, though it had to have been written earlier because Buck had been dead for a while by then.

I would guess, though, that this ballad probably dates from an earlier broadside, since a lot of the other ones in the collection do (Titus Andronicus' Complaint is in there, for instance, which does have an earlier broadside source), but it's hard to say without the records from the Stationers' Register, so.

(My university library, incidentally, has a copy of Buck's Richard III. I found it when I worked in Special Collections a couple of years ago. The bit at the beginning where he's all "the only authority we have for this is Thomas More, and he was not only a papist but a complete smartass" is pretty hilarious. At least, it made me giggle. ;) )

lblanchard July 18 2007, 21:36:02 UTC

I understand that the version published in 1646 is what they call in the biz a "corrupt edition." There's now a critical edition out -- has been for 20 or 30 years -- edited by the remarkably prickly Arthur Noel Kincaid.

a_t_rain July 19 2007, 01:17:39 UTC

TITUS ANDRONICUS' COMPLAINT?!?

Do share, 'cos that sounds hilarious. (I'm thinking that "complaint" is entirely too mild a word, in this instance...)

Thread 5

lnhammer July 18 2007, 19:29:37 UTC

I vote for shouts-out.

---L.

17catherines July 19 2007, 02:08:00 UTC

!!!

%&*%&@@@!!!

!

Sorry, I keep trying to write somethinig coherent but the inaccuracies and slanders are burning my brain...

(why yes, I did have a rather large crush on Richard III for three years at school, and apparently enough of it still remains for this song to drive me right up the wall)

Catherine

(who now has to jump up and down saying "Richard didn't even HAVE a daughter! And he didn't want to marry his niece anyway! Aaaaargh!")