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- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Copyright
- © The Author(s) (2018). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
- ISSN
- 0029-3970
- eISSN
- 1471-6941
- DOI
- 10.1093/notesj/gjy012
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
June 2018 NOTES AND QUERIES 195 The correspondence between the two pas- GEORGE HERBERT’S ‘DOOMES-DAY’ sages is enhanced by Randolph and Herbert’s AND THOMAS RANDOLPH’S ‘SALTING’ shared context of Trinity College, Cambridge. Unexpectedly for a poem on the Final Herbert was a student there from 1609 to 1613, Resurrection, George Herbert’s poem and then a Fellow from 1614 on; Randolph ‘Doomes-day’ has a light, song-like quality in matriculated there in 1624, and was to which each stanza begins with the words become a Fellow there after his graduation in ‘Come away’ followed by a rhyming dimeter 1628. It is unlikely that Herbert was in line. For example, the first stanza begins, Cambridge for the 1627 exercises at which Come away, Randolph’s ‘Salting’ was presented, and Make no delay. most of Herbert’s poetry did not circulate Summon all the dust to rise, widely during his lifetime. Thus, it seems un- Till it stirre, and rubbe the eyes; (1–4) likely that one borrowed directly from the Scholars have identified a number of parallels to other. Instead Randolph and Herbert were contemporary songs, including ‘Come away, probably both echoing a song or cluster of come away, death’ from Shakespeare’s Twelfth lines well-known in Trinity College circles of Night (II.iv.50). Helen Wilcox suggests that the 1610 s and 1620 s. This song most likely Herbert’s poem ‘may be a deliberate ‘‘sacred had the exact phrasing ‘Come [then] away, / parody’’’ of a well-known song by John Dowland: Make no delay’, which lay behind both Herbert and Randolph’s poems. Come away, come sweet Love, The golden morning breakes: McColley aptly notes that all ‘Come away’ All the earth, all the ayre, songs and poems are to some extent dependent Of love and pleasure speakes. upon the biblical Song of Solomon (‘Rise up, my Similarly, Diane McColley notes a lute song love, my fair one, and come away’ (2:10)), and using the ‘Come away’ phrasing written in hence Herbert’s ‘Doomes-day’ ‘is a sacred 1609 by George Handford, who, like Herbert, parody of profane parodies of a sacred text in was a student of Trinity College, Cambridge. an erotic genre’. Randolph’s rendering takes the However, a much closer analogue appears in phrasing in a very different direction, emptying it lines 4–5 of this embedded song from Thomas even of romantic significance by suggesting Randolph’s ‘Salting’, a Cambridge entertain- that young men ‘come away’ only to fill their ment presented in 1627: stomachs. At the very least the evidence from Randolph’s ‘Salting’ confirms the suggestion Make hast make hast & come away e r that Herbert’s ‘Doomes-day’ is manifestly echo- Y meat is hot, o stomacks up o hunger will not stay. ing—and reapplying—a well-known song as part Come then away of its startling subversion of the usual fearsome- make no delay ness associated with the Final Judgement. If you make not hast JAMES DOELMAN You all must fast. (65–71) Brescia University College, University of This playful work was presented as part of the Western Ontario autumn initiation ceremonies for new students doi:10.1093/notesj/gjy012 at Trinity College. Throughout it adopts food The Author(s) (2018). Published by Oxford University tropes for mocking various new students and in Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com this particular passage the Fellow Commoners Advance Access publication 5 April, 2018 are called away to their own meal. The English Poems of George Herbert, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge, 2007), 650. Poetry and Music in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1997), 154–5. Roslyn Richek, ‘Thomas Randolph’s ‘‘Salting’’ (1627), Its Text, and John Milton’s Sixth Prolusion as Another Salting,’ English Literary Renaissance, xii.1 (1982), 103–31, The Oxford DNB notes that there is no evidence for at 115. See also Fredson Bowers, ‘Thomas Randolph’s Herbert’s presence there after 1624. Salting’, MP xxxix.3 (1942), 275–80. McColley, Poetry and Music, 156. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/nq/article-abstract/65/2/195/4961498 by Ed 'DeepDyve' Gillespie user on 20 June 2018
Journal
Notes and Queries – Oxford University Press
Published: Apr 5, 2018
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