Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- A note on abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I The art of memory
- PART II Rhetoric and poetics
- PART III Education and science
- PART IV History and philosophy
- PART V Religion and devotion
- PART VI Literature
- Introduction to Part VI
- POETRY
- VI.1 John Skelton, ‘Upon a Dead Man's Head’ (1527)
- VI.2 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1590)
- VI.3 Anthony Sherley, Wit's New Dial (1604)
- VI.4 Richard Niccols, Mirror for Magistrates (1610)
- VI.5 Abraham Holland, ‘A Funeral Elegy’ (1626)
- VI.6 George Herbert, The Temple (1633)
- VI.7 Francis Quarles, Emblems (1635)
- VI.8 Mary Fage, Fame's Rule (1637)
- VI.9 Margaret Cavendish, selected works
- VI.10 John Milton, Paradise Lost (1674)
- PLAYS AND PROSE
- Index
- References
VI.8 - Mary Fage, Fame's Rule (1637)
from POETRY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2016
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- Acknowledgements
- A note on abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I The art of memory
- PART II Rhetoric and poetics
- PART III Education and science
- PART IV History and philosophy
- PART V Religion and devotion
- PART VI Literature
- Introduction to Part VI
- POETRY
- VI.1 John Skelton, ‘Upon a Dead Man's Head’ (1527)
- VI.2 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1590)
- VI.3 Anthony Sherley, Wit's New Dial (1604)
- VI.4 Richard Niccols, Mirror for Magistrates (1610)
- VI.5 Abraham Holland, ‘A Funeral Elegy’ (1626)
- VI.6 George Herbert, The Temple (1633)
- VI.7 Francis Quarles, Emblems (1635)
- VI.8 Mary Fage, Fame's Rule (1637)
- VI.9 Margaret Cavendish, selected works
- VI.10 John Milton, Paradise Lost (1674)
- PLAYS AND PROSE
- Index
- References
Summary
About the author
Mary Fage (fl. 1637) had knowledge of, though probably no direct contact with, the Caroline court. Based on Fame's Rule, a case can be made for Fage being England's first female professional writer actively to seek patronage.
About the text
This work consists of over four hundred acrostic poems, each on the name of a noble or notable person in Caroline England, with an anagram that sets the poem's guiding conceit. The ingenuity displayed, along with the monumental nature of the enterprise, reflects the taste for wordplay during the period. These encomia celebrate the virtues ascribed to the dedicatees and prophesy enduring fame. With its emphasis on precise rank and orders of nobility, it is noteworthy that the collection was entered into the Stationers’ Register by Thomas Herbert, whose imprimatur was required for books of heraldry.
The arts of memory
The title (in its original form) is a pun calling to mind both ‘rule’ (the extension of one's jurisdiction, in this case of Fame personified) and ‘roll’ (a scroll containing a list of people of quality, associated with Memory herself who records things worthy of fame). Fage writes that hers is an eternising activity, a task she sets about accomplishing with a dizzying array of memory images conjured up by the anagrams from which the poems take their lead, and expressed in such colourful and sometimes outlandish turns of phrase as to make them all the more memorable.
Textual notes
Fames Roule (London, 1637), E2v, G3v–G4r.
Fame's Rule
To the right honorable EDWARD, Earl of Dorset, Baron Buckhurst, Knight of the Garter,
Lord Chamberlain to the Queen's Majesty, and of his Majesty's most honorable Privy Council.
EDWARD SACKVILE.
Anagramma.
LIVE, WARDED CASK.
Ever may you (a cask or cabinet)
Decked with rich precious stones (which therein set
Worthily do adorn your worthy mind)
A long and lasting life forever find;
Rightly a noble cask you are, wherein
Dwells jewels that full long in you have been.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Memory Arts in Renaissance EnglandA Critical Anthology, pp. 309 - 311Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016