The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, Volume 7, Part 1: The Holy Sonnets

HSWhy

HSWhy Textual Introduction As is shown on Figure 2 in the General Textual Introduction (p. lxii), HSWhy is the fourteenth item in NY3'S collection of "Holy Sonnets," the second of the re.. placement sonnets that NY3 appends to its replication of Group Ill's earlier sequence of "Diuine Meditations." I In the restructuring that gives rise to the subsequent Group 1/11 arrangement, however, the poem moves to the eighth position in the sequence and appears there in its first print appearance in A. In B, when the four discarded Group..III sonnets are recovered from H6 and reinstalled in the sequence, HSWhy is relocated to twelfth place and remains so positioned in all subsequent editions save those of Alford (L), who reproduces the 1633 sequence; Lowell (M), who com.. bines the Holy Sonnets with Corona in a continuously numbered series; Gardner (U), who prints the 1633 sequence; and Shawcross (Z), who essentially follows Gardner (see Figure 6 on p. lxxvi). The earlier, NY3 version of HSWhy contains two readings that do not survive the transition to the subsequent Group..I state of the text-"arne I" (for the later "are we") in line I and "Alas I'ame weaker, wo'is" (for the later "Weaker I am, woe is" in line 9-and no clearer examples of original and revised authoriallections exist among the Holy Sonnets. Excepting these two adjustments, however, Donne ap.. parently remained satisfied with the text of this poem, and subsequent manuscript variations-all of which appear among the Group..II artifacts-are scribal in origin. These include B7'S "more purer" (for "more pure") in line 3, B7 and CT1's "further" (for "farther") in line 4, C9 and H6's "Beare" (for "bore") in line 6, and the C9..H6.. WN I reading "great wonder" (for "greater wonder") in line 11. The Group..II manu.. scripts (including C9 and H6) also record the more modern spelling "sillilye" (for "seelylye") in line 6, C2 diverging from its Group..I fellows to join them. The remaining Group..II change-that of "simple" to "simpler" in line 4 (B7 and CT1 misread as "simples")-is more difficult to explain. Bearing every earmark of a trivialization, this almost certainly does not represent a third authorial revision, even though on the stemma depicted in Figure 3 its origin would have to be located in the LRH3 and thus attributed to the author. A possible explanation is that the stemma is inadequately detailed, that the error was introduced in a lost scribal manuscript that once existed below LRH3 on the genealogical tree and was the parent of WN I and ps. If such an artifact was once extant, however, it is somewhat surpris.. ing that the manuscripts contain nothing beyond this single variant that implies its lAs is shown on Figure 3 and noted in the General Textual Introduction (pp. lxiv, lxiii), yl's "Other Meditations"-of which HSWhy is the second-were obtained from a Group...11 source at some point after the original collection was entered into the artifact. HSWhy Textual Introduction As is shown on Figure 2 in the General Textual Introduction (p. lxii), HSWhy is the fourteenth item in NY3'S collection of "Holy Sonnets," the second of the replacement sonnets that NY3 appends to its replication of Group Ill's earlier sequence of"Diuine Meditations." I In the restructuring that gives rise to the subsequent Group IIII arrangement, however, the poem moves to the eighth position in the sequence and appears there in its first print appearance in A. In B, when the four discarded Group-III sonnets are recovered from H6 and reinstalled in the sequence, HSWhy is relocated to twelfth place and remains so positioned in all subsequent editions save those of Alford (L), who reproduces the 1633 sequence; Lowell (M), who combines the Holy Sonnets with Corona in a continuously numbered series; Gardner (U), who prints the 1633 sequence; and Shawcross (Z), who essentially follows Gardner (see Figure 6 on p. lxxvi). The earlier, NY3 version of HSWhy contains two readings that do not survive the transition to the subsequent Group-I state of the text-"ame I" (for the later "are we") in line I and "Alas I'ame weaker, wo'is" (for the later "Weaker I am, woe is" in line 9-and no clearer examples of original and revised authoriallections exist among the Holy Sonnets. Excepting these two adjustments, however, Donne apparently remained satisfied with the text of...