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Grammar and Music in Thomas Campion's Observations in the Art of English Poesie

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Jane K. Fenyo
Jane K. Fenyo*
Affiliation:
C. W. Post College
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Extract

The problem presented by Thomas Campion's Observations in the Art of English Poesie (London, 1602) has not yet been satisfactorily solved. The question is: since Campion's Ayres arouse unanimous praise for his sensitive ear and metrical skill, how is it that his treatise on adapting classical metrics to English verse evokes charges of an insensitive ear and of phonetic inconsistency? Why does Campion seem to hear his ayres but not all of his examples in Observations? The earlier critics tend to blame his poor understanding of phonetic quantity in Observations. He is accused of ‘hopeless confusion’ and of having failed in the task he set himself. His’ system must be wrong’ and his omission of needed examples shows ‘the apparently irresistible spirit of perversity’. His work is cited as evidence that ‘shows how difficult it was to attain English (and therefore phonetic) conception of quantity’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 17 , 1970 , pp. 46 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1970

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References

1 Philip Rosseter, A Booke of Ayres (1601): Two Bookes of Ayres (?1613); The Thirdand Fourth Booke of Ayres (?1617); and others collected in Davis, Walter R., The Works of Thomas Campion (Garden City, N.Y., 1967)Google Scholar.

2 Bullen, A. H., ‘Thomas Campion’ in Elizabethans (New York, 1962), p. 137 Google Scholar, first printed in 1924 from a lecture at Oxford originally written in 1889, and Campion, Thomas: Songs and Masques with Observations in the Art of English Poesy (London, 1903), p. xxx Google Scholar; Vivian, Percival, Campion's Works (London, 1909), p. lvii Google Scholar; MacDonagh, Thomas, Thomas Campion and the Art of English Poetry (London, 1913), p. 19 Google Scholar. Omond, Thomas S., English Metrists (London, 1921), p. 20 Google Scholar. Pattison, Bruce, ‘Literature and Music’ in V. De Sola Pinto's The English Renaissance: 1510-1688 (New York, 1938), pp. 134, 136; Miles M. Kastendieck, England's Musical Poet: Thomas Campion (New York, 1938), p. 200 Google Scholar. Ing, Catherine, Elizabethan Lyrics: A Study in the Development of English Metres and Their Relation to Poetic Effect (London, 1951), pp. 160–166 Google Scholar; Bush, Douglas, English Poetry: The Main Currents from Chaucer to the Present (New York, 1952), p. 58 Google Scholar. Smith, Hallett, Elizabethan Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. 283 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. and Davis, The Works of Thomas Campion, p. xv.

3 Vivian, Campion's Works, p. lxiii.

4 Omond, English Metrists, p. 23.

5 Saintsbury, George, Historical Manual of English Prosody (London, 1923)Google Scholar, II, 140.

6 Willcock, G. D., ‘Passing Pitefull Hexameters: A Study of Quantity and Accent in English Renaissance Verse,’ Modern Language Review, XXIX (1934)Google Scholar, r5-

7 Kastendieck, England's Musical Poet, pp. 89,102; Ing, Elizabethan Lyrics, p. 60; Davis, The Works of Thomas Campion, p. 289.

8 England's Musical Poet, p. 71.

9 Elizabethan Lyrics, p. 60.

10 The Works of Thomas Campion, p. XIV.

11 ‘Imitatio’, The Scholemaster (Book n), 1570. For convenience Elizabethan criticism is cited from Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith, 2 vols. (London, 1904): Ascham, 1, 29-33; William Webbe, A Discourse of English Poesie, 1586, in Smith, n, 379.

12 For the Elizabethan movement for quantitative meters see Willcock, Smith, G. G., and The Poems of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. William A. Ringler, Jr. (Oxford, 1962), pp. 389—393 Google Scholar.

13 Campion's Cambridge years probably enhanced his familiarity shown in his Latin verse with the work of such poets as Catullus, Horace, Martial, Propertius. See Vivian, Campion's Works, p. xxvii.

14 Poemata, Thomas Campiani (1595) noted in Francis Meres’ Palladis Tamia (1598) as 'honourable advancement in the Latin Empyre’ (G. G. Smith, II, 315)Google Scholar.

15 A Booke of Ayres (1601), perhaps, however, not written before Observations. See n. 60.

16 Samuel Daniel, A Defense ofRyme (?1603), in Smith, n, 379.

17 William Shakespeare's Small Latine & Lesse Greek (Urbana, 111., 1944) for the summary of the grammar's use and influence, I, 97-99; for a full account of its history, Appendix II ‘Formation of the Authorized Grammar’, 11, 690-701.

18 ‘Imitatio’, The Scholemaster (Book n), 1570, reprinted in Smith, 1, 9.

19 Observations, p. 294.

20 A Defense qf Ryme, pp. 376, 377.

21 Observations, p. 296.

22 Observations, p . 296.

23 Observations, p . 297.

24 Observations, p . 297.

25 Observations, p. 298. See Kastendieck's explanation and defense of Campion's point. England's Musical Poet, pp. 93-95.

26 Observations, p . 298

27 Observations, p . 303.

28 Observations, p. 306.

29 The grammar's description is: ‘Pentametrium Carmen Elegiacum, quod & Pentametri nomen habet, è duplici constat Penthemimeri, quarū prior duos pedes, dactylicos, spondaicos, vel alterutros comprehendis, cii syllaba lō ga altera etiam duos pedes, sed ominino dactylicos cū syllaba item longa vt Quidias Rēs ēst sōllĭcĭtĭ plēnă timōris ămōr.’ (Of pentameters, elegiac verse which also has the name of pentameter, is composed of a pair of sets of two and a half feet of which the first set comprises two feet, dactyls, spondees, or one of the two, with a long syllable, and the other comprises two feet but only dactyls, likewise with a long syllable.)

30 Observations, p. 311.

31 Observations, p . 313.

32 Davis, The Works of Thomas Campion, p. 315, n. 63.

33 Observations, p . 313.

34 Observations, pp. 313, 314.

35 Murray, Gilbert, The Classical Tradition in Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), pp. 84–86 Google Scholar.

36 ‘depimitur’ may be a misprint for ‘deprimitur’.

37 Observations, p. 313

38 The [g] may not have been pronounced since it was lost regularly before some consonants, but the [r) ] was retained. Dobson, E.J., English Pronunciation: 1500-1700 (London, 1957 Google Scholar), n, §412 and 399.

39 See n. 32. Davis’ conclusion is somewhat similar: ‘Campion … sees the accent of the individual syllable as a matter of pitch reinforcing stress. Though his terminology is sometimes confusing, it appears that a syllable is either “grave” or stressed, “flat” or unstressed; either “rising” or high in pitch, or “falling” or low in pitch.’ I cannot agree with Vivian, who, taking ‘accent’ to mean stress, believes Campion in ‘hopeless confusion’. Campion's Works, pp. lx-lXIV.

40 Observations, pp. 314-317.

41 Fry, D. B., ‘Duration and Intensity as Physical Correlates of Linguistic Stress’, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, XXVII (1955), 765–768 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Fry finds that duration influences judgment of stress more strongly than intensity (loudness). Bolinger, Dwight L. finds pitch a better signal of stress than intensity, ‘A Theory of Pitch Accent in English’, Word, XIV (1958), 109–149 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 It has been shown that duration and pitch can function independently and that duration alone and pitch alone are better cues to stress than loudness. Fry's experiment J ASA (1955), shows that when duration alone was increased on a syllable, judgments increased that the syllable was stressed; and Bolinger's experiment, Word (1958), shows that when pitch prominence alone was given to items in a sentence those items were heard as accented. Bolinger, regards pitch and duration as operating independently, Generality, Gradience, and the All-or-None (The Hague, 1961), p. 25 Google Scholar. The prosodist can see, in a form which is technical but not forbidding, evidence in acoustic data for readings of a foot from ‘Shall I compare thee to a summers day?’ in Seymour Chatman's A Theory of Meter (The Hague, 1965), pp. 162-166.

43 Campion advocates phonetic thinking rather than spelling, although he does shape some spellings to conform conveniently to the rule of positions. Many had previously advocated phonetic alphabets (Dobson, I, 38-129), and as Davis notes (p. 314, n. 61) Baïf had created one for his French vers mesuré.

44 The curious example of ‘manure’ may appear because Campion uses it in an ‘Iambick Dimeter’ example.

45 Illegible.

46 A form o£holy with short 0 is listed by Kökeritz, Helge, Shakespeare's Pronunciation (New Haven, 1953). PP-223 Google Scholar, 234.

47 Richard Stanyhurst's notes on prosody in his dedication and preface to his translation of the Aeneid, 1582, also conclude with a brief section on quantity of final syllables alphabetically arranged by final letters, in Smith, 1, 146.

48 Observations, p. 296.

49 Campion's Works, p. 360, n. for p. 38.

50 A Defense of Ryme, pp. 376, 377.

51 Observations, p. 291.

52 Observations, p . 293.

53 Observations, p. 293.

54 Observations, p. 294.

55 Observations, p. 297.

56 Observations, p. 298.

57 The Works of Thomas Campion, p. 289.

58 The given pattern, Observations, p. 310; dimeters, p. 307; contradictions to pattern by rule of position as solved by Chap, x: ies long by ¶ 27, ick short by ¶ 26, ing short by 1fi3; accent from rules of Chap, x: Lawra, falling ¶19; smoothly, sweetly, falling ¶ 11 and 19; either, other, falling ¶ 11; musick, sharp and lively ¶ 26; gracing, first syllable grave, ¶13.

59 It should be noted, however, in his sapphics set to music, ‘Come let us sound’ he does preserve the classical ratio, The Works of Thomas Campion, p. 49.

60 G. B. Harrison, ‘Books and Readers, 1591-1594,’ The Library, Fourth Series, VIII [1927], 279-280.