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  • Anonymity’s Revelations in The Arte of English Poesie
  • Marcy L. North (bio)

Anonymity was a familiar signature to late Elizabethan readers, whether they perused the pastoral eclogues in the Shepheardes Calender, the acrostics on Elizabeth’s name in Hymnes of Astraea, the satirical Metamorphosis of Ajax, or the many unattributed poems circulating in manuscript. 1 Although anonymity proved useful to balladeers, polemicists, and lyric poets alike, it appears to have served a unique self-defining and, ironically, identifying function in elite coterie and court circles, that is, among the patrons and aristocrats that the authors of the above titles sought to impress and amuse. Anonymity’s paradoxical link to courtly identity finds a reluctant champion in the anonymous author of the 1589 Arte of English Poesie, who instructs aspiring courtiers in poetic conventions of discretion while advising them more generally to shun anonymity. The author’s own anonymity, however, impossibly complicates any simple application of his advice. If the unestablished courtiers he purports to help want to utilize his instruction in attracting potential court patrons, they must see through his entertaining but contradictory lessons on anonymity and recognize that the Arte is, first of all, its author’s own discrete appeal for favor. 2

Early in the Arte of English Poesie, the author describes the “Epigramme” as a necessarily anonymous device used by those who “must needs vtter their splenes” with “bitter taunts, and priuy nips, or witty scoffes and other merry conceits.” 3 The short satirical verses traditionally “had no certaine author that would auouch them, some for feare of blame, if they were ouer saucy or sharpe, others for modestie” (p. 54). To exemplify this device, however, the Arte’s author employs a piece of Virgil apocrypha that de-emphasizes the epigram’s critical potential and highlights its effectiveness [End Page 1] as patronage poetry. The author leaves behind the “tauernes and common tabling houses” where he first located the epigram and places Virgil at court where clever compliments earn royal favor (p. 54). In this courtly setting, the epigram illustrates particularly well anonymity’s double-edged function as concealer and revealer, its potential to lead to fame or to obscurity. It underscores the Arte’s ambiguous depiction of anonymity as a mark of social status, one that paradoxically must be visible in order to be effective.

For “modestie” rather than for “feare of blame,” Virgil left his name off two lines praising Caesar which he “set vpon the pallace gate of the emperour Augustus” (p. 54). 4 The lines demonstrate the cleverness but none of the spleen that one might expect from the epigram:

It raines all night, early the shewes returneGod and Caesar, do raigne and rule by turne.

(p. 55, Arte’s translation)

When Caesar acknowledged his pleasure in the lines and “willed the author should be knowen,” a “sausie courtier proferd him selfe to be the man, and had a good reward giuen him” (p. 55). Virgil’s next epigram was bitterer, for “seing him self by his ouermuch modestie defrauded of the reward, that an impudent had gotten by abuse of his merit,” he anonymously fastened to the same gate four riddling half-lines that read “sic vos non vobis” or, “thus you [perform a task], but not for yourselves” (p. 55). After no one could decipher the mysterious lines, Virgil attached a heading, “Hos ego versiculos feci tulit alter honores” or, “I made these verses, another has borne off the honor,” and completed the poem:

Sic vos non vobis Fertis aratra bovesSic vos non vobis Vellera fertis ovesSic vos non vobis Mellificatis apesSic vos non vobis Nidificatis aves.

(p. 55) 5

Thus you oxen bear plows, but not for yourselves Thus you sheep bear fleece, but not for yourselves Thus you bees make honey, but not for yourselves Thus you birds build nests, but not for yourselves. [End Page 2]

This time he signed the epigram, and his witty retort not only set straight the false attribution, it earned him the emperor’s greatest honor, the name of “friend.”

The lessons in the Virgil anecdote appear to point the way to court approval. The Arte suggests that...

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